


Bold in Deed: Time Tryeth Troth

by Mirabai0821



Series: The Heraldry Series [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lies, Long Distance Pining, Masturbation, Potential close distance pining, Racism, Seperation, Sex, Slavery, Torture, Violence, misogynoir, religious wars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:39:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirabai0821/pseuds/Mirabai0821
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You didn’t like how that one ended. I can see it in your face.</p><p>Would it make you feel better to know I got more for you?</p><p>I mean I told you already; no happy ever afters. And I know, I know, barely any of that last part was happy at all. And you’d probably be right to expect more of the same. I mean think about it. Thedas is big and scary, and a lot of people, places, and things are working together to keep them apart.</p><p>But at the end of it all,</p><p>Despite all that,</p><p>This is <span class="u">them</span> we're talking about here.</p><p>You think something like a little time or distance or war is gonna keep those two apart?</p><p>Not likely.</p><p>So trust me and let me finish telling you this part of the tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Evelyn: Hopes and Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Time Tryeth Troth: Time Tests Faith the motto of the Trevelyan house (I called this Heraldry for a reason ya know :P) in our world. Time will test their truth. Time will test them all.
> 
> You know what. Fuck it. We're flying by the seat of our pants here. You like this? You want more of it? Read it! Comment! Drop a line at mirabai0821.tumblr.com This has always been a labor of love for me and I suspect Time Tryeth is going to be a helluva lot more labor than it is love (or equal parts both who knows) But we're gonna try, oh are we gonna try, to write this for you--and for B and Cullen. 
> 
> Maker fucking guide us all.
> 
> Be warned, not that I need to tell you, but you might wanna read Into Darkness, Unafraid and Bold in Deed before tackling this. Don't wanna have a bad time now do you?

_ Running, running, flying down the aisle away from the altar, screaming, shouting, cheering sounding behind them. She took his wrist and pulled and he came away, running with her, flying with her. _ __  
  


_ Down the aisle, dodging the tables, her one hand on his wrist, the other fisted in her skirts to keep her from tripping. _

 

_ She laughed. _

 

_ And he laughed with her. _

 

_ They  _ _ flew. _

 

_ Together. _

 

_ Closing in upon the double doors that would take them out of the grand ballroom. She would lead them through the halls of her home, out the entrance and to the stables where Jackson waited. _

_ They would _

 

_ Fly. _

 

_ Out of the city and half-way to Markham before her father could order the gates closed. _

 

**

 

In her dreams, they never stopped flying.

 

In her dreams, they made it past that door and down that hall. Jackson and White Luck still waited for them, trusty steeds ready and eager to break tether and  _ fly _ .

 

In her dreams they were supposed to be halfway to Markham. 

 

Instead they were no way. In her joy and jubilation, in their  _ flight _ she took a wrong turn, and another, and another yet until they were closer to Antiva than the third largest city in the Marches--one nestled right after Starkhaven and right before her own Ostwick.

 

Cullen chided her gently. “I thought you knew these hills. Isn’t that what you said?” He spoke, voice thick and overloaded with his own joy, any annoyance at being utterly and hopelessly lost overwritten by the sheer...he lacked the word to describe it.

 

She grumbled through her smile and pointed Jackson due east, it really didn’t matter if they made it to Markham. 

 

They were together.

 

They stopped at an old roadside chapel, something cobbled together in ages past to shelter the faithful in their pilgrimage down the Old Tevinter roads back when they served gods Older than the Imperium itself.

 

In histories hence it was converted to the New God and His Bride, run now by a pair of aged Sisters given unto the Maker in their infant years.

 

They wouldn’t take any money for their services (which was good considering neither had any, coinpurses left behind at Trevelyan Manor) taking instead only Cullen’s skill with a hammer and Evelyn’s skill with a bow. While he repaired some loose shingles on the roof, she shot a feast for the four of them. 

 

The sisters married them.

 

Took from them their finery, all armor and silk, and dressed them in white roughspun cotton, softer and more beautiful than the Maker’s touch. And in a chapel surrounded by candles and starlight they were wed, and it was the plain and ordinary both hoped and dreamt of.

 

The sisters made their ribald jokes, one imparting to Cullen the Knowledge he would need to please his new lady wife, the other pulling the pins from Evelyn’s hair so the vines hung free and loose and  _ oh… _

 

The sisters watched them depart for their honeymoon sweet, a tiny room above the barn, old hands twining, remembering that there was no greater Commandment from their Maker but Love.

 

And love they did make.

 

In silk or roughspun or nothing  _ she was  _ ….

 

And in gilded armor or fur lined mantle or nude  _ he was _ …

 

Yet when they came together they were sun and earth and plain and ordinary and…

 

_ And… _

 

She woke wedged between two branches. 

 

She woke able to  _ feel _ all ten of his fingertips on her face. The heat from her fevered dream lingering, she felt the depressions in her skin, she was  _ there _ .

 

They were together.

 

Groaning, Evelyn bit back tears, unable to discern her dream from a nightmare, observing the first pinks and oranges of the new day alight the sky. 

 

Jackson was not below where she left him to mount the tree and find her sleeping space, having gone off to graze or to gaze longingly east, pawing the dirt asking with his large dark amber eyes  _ “When are we going back?” _

 

There was a white horse he left behind, one clueless and skittish, one prone to walking off a cliff without him to guide his hooved steps. 

 

Ironic given his name was supposed to hold luck.

 

Bones cracking and creaking, Evelyn took a moment to work at the soreness at the base of her spine, at the numbness in the third and fourth digits of each hand. Morning’s chill had numbed the tip of her nose and her toes were frozen but not quite solid. She spent the last two days avoiding the well travelled roads, sticking to the forest fearful that her legal husband or father might send men after her to retrieve her.

 

The latter had done it before.

 

But she remembered Gareth’s blank stare, and his silence as she moved him from the floor dotted in his mother’s blood to a couch. The last thing in his eyes that looked like sentience was the recognition that all three bore the same colored eyes--and that one of those pairs was now lost.

 

Evelyn pressed her thumb and forefinger into those dark aged whiskey bottles, trying to press away with pain the tears that threatened.

 

Grandmere would be pyre’d without her. Someone would touch the torch to her flesh, someone would sing the incantations. Someone...  _ someone. _

 

And not her.

 

Evelyn broke her heart, her trust, and now didn’t have the courtesy to lay her to her final rest.

 

That morning’s grief overwhelmed her as it had for the last two days. 

  
She had tears for breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't often write to music, too distracting. Yet for a bit of meta, I envisioned this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz82xbLvK_k as the song playing in Chapter 32 of BiD right when Evelyn starts to hear Assan whisper to her while they're at the altar.
> 
> The guitars kick in as they start to run.
> 
> I am lowkey Undertale trash.
> 
> And now you know where the chapter title comes from.


	2. Cole: Try

The dead did not always know.

Cole heard them, less though now, like cotton stuffed into his ears, rather than the piercing shriek they used to be when he was new.

The dead mumbled and groaned, shaking themselves, thinking they would wake in their bodies and the dream of their deaths would be forgotten like most dreams were.

And when they realized, usually when the torches were put to their flesh, or when the dirt covered their corpses, the grief shattered them into pieces, the jagged edges of them becoming claws they used to rend the living.

They hurt in their self-grief, a hurt the New Cole could not correct or render forgotten. He couldn’t help the dead.

It made him sad.

He’d only known the sad dead.

But she knew what she was and where she was and how she was, and she was _not_ sad.

Cole blinked at her, the blue ice in his eyes already melting into tears for her loss.

_Do not cry for me pitit._ She said with no mouth and no voice. He felt her in his chest, in the spaces where Varric told him love slept. She touched him there, filled him full and Cole cried harder.

She tsk’d at him.

_Now what did I just say, hardhead?_

Cole wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve and gave her a watery and trembling smile. “I know. I’m not crying for you anymore.”

She flickered and for a moment she became the sad dead.

“She’ll never know that you forgive her. She’ll never know how proud of her you were when she ran because she had the courage when you once didn’t. She’ll never know that you’re happy now. That you’re not alone anymore. She’ll never forgive herself.”

Cole shook with a sob and Varric placed a hand on his wrist squeezing, consoling the boy as the servants sang the incantations.

“It’s okay kid.” Varric squeezed him again. “Alright, I’ll level with you, it’s really really fucked up. But it'll be okay.”

Cole caught the sidelong glance Varric threw at the Trevelyans, the three of them; mother, father, and brother standing there (or swaying) like statues.

The servants sang the incantations. The servants spoke the words that praised Eartha Arnette Marguerite Trevelyan’s life. The funeral was their work, aided in part by Ms. Montilyet, grateful to have something to put her hands to, to keep them busy, to keep herself from flying apart in her own quiet muted grief.

The maids placed flowers in Grandmere’s folded hands--an honor Susanna should have borne. Their kennelmaster arranged the ceremonial cord of wood beneath her body, something her oldest grandchild should have done.

Her son should touch the torch to her, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t move, still catatonic, immobile, frozen in the moment when his mother died in his arms. The Trevelyans watched others do their work filtered through a haze of pain or drug laced wine or both.

And the only one who would have shouldered it all cheerfully, who would have sang despite having no voice, who would have chopped the wood herself having never wielded an axe, who would have placed the flowers not in her hands but in her _hair_ the way Assan used to…

The one who would stand with torch in trembling hand, who would have kissed her Grandmere goodnight and goodbye

Was no where near.

Cole flinched as the burning torch flickered in Josephine’s hand. The Ambassador took the fire from the pyre attendants, she approached the flower strewn body but pulled up short, standing in front of the family, desperate and pleading.

All three stared at her, and continued to stare.

“Why won’t they…those...” Varric said words he once made Cole promise to never repeat. Foul things that tasted funny on his tongue, like something too spicy or something rotten.

“They can’t.” Cole answered. “They just _can’t._ ”

The Trevelyans kept watching as the servants commended Eartha’s ashen body and smoky spirit to the Maker, offering no protest when the Inquisition put their own torches to her.

“C’mon kid, we gotta do this, for Viney you know. I think she trusted us to do this for her.”

Varric and Cole took their fire from the attendants, passing Cullen who remained unmoving, his own torch slowly burning out at his feet.

New Cole picked up the torch and offered it back, but Cullen, just like the Trevelyans, only watched.

“I...I can’t.” He muttered through grit teeth.

Cole could not help the sad dead, but he could help this. He pushed the torch closer, imploring him with softly spoken assurances.

“Love lingers, fingers finding, forest in her hair. She doesn’t hate you. She loves. She loves everyone, everything, especially you.”

New Cole knew he didn’t scare Cullen so much anymore, wasn’t afraid that he’d turn rotten like the mages in his dreams. They weren’t friends, not yet, not like the friends he’ll need to suffer his new hurts, but Cole--always and ever--was trying.

New Inquisitor shook his head at New Cole confused, and the boy sighed trying to find a better way to make him understand what the happy dead needed him to understand.

“Dreaming, dancing, fearless flying. Because she watched you dance, and remembered another dance long finished. You made her smile. You made them _both_ smile. She’s dancing now, she doesn’t have to stop. No one watches, no one to judge, no one to stop them. She knows you’ll dance again and no one will stop you.”

The New Inquisitor looked adrift, carried away on swaying steps, guitar notes and ancient love songs. “Do you mean?” 

Cole smiled, pleased with himself, he made him understand.

Cole pushed the torch forward and this time Cullen took it.

_Take care of him._ The Arrow and the Earth, the happy dead; they sighed as they disappeared together in the smoke of Cullen’s torch.

“I will try.” Cole answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Time Tests Faith. Time Tries Truth. ALL will be tested, so lets see this tale told from all their perspectives instead of just two. Watch as I make things considerably harder for myself.


	3. Dorian: It's Different Down Here

_ It’s different down here _ , Dorian thought to himself with a wry yet saddening smile. Sorora would have appreciated the reference, it probably would have brought a smile to her face, a smile she would have needed now that the grim business of laying her revered Grandmother to rest was concluded.

 

Back home, funerals lasted days depending on how rich, influential, and beloved one was, the living making pilgrimage to the home of the hallowed dead. Whenever Dorian decided that Thedas lacked good company, and provided his name was still on Father’s will, the send-off for him would probably last a week, longer if his little fantasy of universal manumission for all Tevinter slaves came true.

 

The turn around down here from shuffled mortal coil to conduction to the Maker’s side was only a ghastly handful of hours. If he didn’t know any better he’d pity the woman for being so criminally unloved. He certainly couldn’t gauge any affection from the fruit of her loins, her family standing like strickent and indolent ghouls.

 

Or maybe that’s just how Southerners grieved. More’s the pity, the funeral for a woman like that, to hear Sorora tell it, would have lasted a season back home.

 

_ It’s different down here, _ Dorian reminded himself.

 

From the way they talked and dressed, to the things they ate, how they fucked, even how they honored the dearly departed, these Southerners insisted on being so damned contrarian that it annoyed him endlessly.

 

But, they loved differently too. 

 

He observed Commander... _ Inquisitor _ Rutherford reach to his neck for maybe the third time that hour, confirming what he no doubt already knew.

 

Yes, Evelyn was still alive.

 

No, she wasn’t coming back any time soon.

 

They loved differently down there. Southerners were open and affectionate, they held hands in public, whispered sweet nothings in their lover’s ears over dinner. They called each other sweetheart, strawhead,  _ kadan, _ out in the open for all to hear.

 

You invited scandal and scorn for such behavior in Minrathous, even with a cherished spouse. 

 

And for people like him, for people that loved the way  _ he _ did…

 

Dorian waved the thought away like a bothersome fly.

 

Down here, they loved  _ for keeps _ . He knew there was some merit to the South, that it wasn’t all doldrums and bad wine. He just didn’t expect it to be that.

 

Again Cullen reached for the phylactery about his neck and Dorian felt some residual pull on his magic as the former templar activated it, creating an uneasy sensation in the back of his mind like scraping fingernails. Grateful for a new thought to focus on, Dorian chewed on the tip of his index finger thinking about the next time he might be called upon to perform phylactery Blood Magic. 

 

_ I put too much Veil in it when I needn’t. The power is in the blood of the host, utilizing the Veil’s power with my actual mana rather than blood manipulation is what’s creating the phantom Silence sensation. There’s a bit of me in there that he tugs at whenever he activates the damn thing. I really should tell him to stop, it feels like he’s scratching my brain. _

 

But Dorian hadn’t the heart for such things. His half of a dragon’s tooth pulled heavy about his neck, a guilty chain. In a moment of sympathy and solidarity with his bereft friend, Dorian reached for his token and squeezed. 

 

At least his heart was still nearby.

 

The Iron Bull largely kept his own countenance, Dorian figuring he was still reeling with the realization that Evelyn left them all behind. Abandonment, even with a good reason, was still abandonment.

 

_ Don’t you think that’s a mite bit hypocritical of you Dor? _

 

The voice in his head that liked to masquerade as his conscious from time to time used to sound like this fetching gentleman Dorian met when he was on his fifth Circle. They had a torrid love affair as only repressed young adults could,entertaining vaguely criminal fantasies of social revolution after their tamer but no less criminal fantasies of lust were satisfied.

 

‘One day we’ll be able to walk out and free, no more secrets or lies or illicit rendezvous.’

 

‘But I rather like our secrets, lying is a second skin to me, and you already know how much I enjoy our illicit rendezvous.’

 

‘I mean it! One day we won’t have to meet like this Dor.’

 

Oh yes, he remembered, Salvius was the first person to ever call him ‘Dor.’

 

Their affair ended when Dorian,  _ again, _ was removed from the Circle and he never saw his handsome paramour again. They kept in contact over the years through a series of dwindling correspondence until finally, the last letter wasn’t one at all, but an invitation.

 

To a wedding.

 

Dorian threw out the invitation along with the letters he accumulated over the years, but he kept his lover’s voice though, locked away in his head as the oft ignored voice of reason.

 

But now, apropos of nothing, that voice changed to the only  _ other _ person who ever called him ‘Dor.’

 

_ Don’t you think that’s a mite bit hypocritical of you Dor? Judging me for ‘abandonment’ knowing what you know?  _ Sorora asked.

 

It’s the first time he’s ever heard a woman in his head that wasn’t his mother.

 

Dorian snapped back.  _ Yes but you needn't remind me.  _

 

_ I’m just doing my job Dor. _

 

**

 

“Maker be praised we can finally depart this pit! Never thought I’d see the day I’d be thankful for going  _ further _ south.” Dorian nudged Bull in the ribs, forcing levity where it really ought not be.

 

Bull ignored him, shoving his pack closed with an agonized groan. The Void-beast Bull had the audacity to call a mount hissed and snapped at her Master, annoyed with her ill treatment. 

 

“Amatus?” Dorian questioned. “Are you alright?”

 

Whatever war the Bull waged within himself broke through the barriers of his heart and spilled over onto his face. The Iron Bull answered him with a fire laced kissed that curled the toes in Dorian’s boots. Thick grey thumbs pressed on the sides of his face, feathering back and forth as though his lover meant to imprint the feel of oil perfumed, spice colored, spice flavored skin into his rough hands. Bulls lips molded over his and The Iron Bull  _ inhaled _ , taking his last breath like a qunari about to drown.

 

Outside their little universe of love, Sera made an undignified noise. Usually prone to fits of gross gesticulation at such acts of public affection, she could only squeak and sigh.  _ Everyone _ felt the heartbreak of B being gone and it made  _ everyone  _ act out in fits of desperation, madness, or sorrow, all things that flavored Bull’s kiss.

 

At last he pulled away, but Dorian snaked an arm around Bull’s neck and  _ pulled him back _ for another, deeper kiss. One that drew a moan from the qunari’s throat, one not heard outside closed doors or beyond soft sheets.

 

Had Iron Bull the notion for tears, his single eye would have cried.

 

Dorian enjoyed that kiss, wanted more, wanted to feel that desperate urge that reminded him--and he liked to be reminded-- _ that it was different down here _ . That all the things Salvius stopped fighting for, he needn’t fight for here.

 

He needed those things, especially now in such times as these. He suspected there was much, much more to that impromptu kiss, he suspected that he’d regret it.

 

So he took another one for good measure. Let it never be said that Dorian did not give as good as he got.

 

He released his amatus, let him go. And  _ his _ silver grey eyes  _ did _ have the notion for tears, and they welled, knowing without knowing what came next.

 

_ See, that’s what you get for talking shit about me. _

 

_ Shut. Up. Sorora! _

 

“Other Boss!” The Iron Bull called, the bass of it cracking under some as yet unknown weight. “Inquisitor!”

 

Dorian watched Cullen straightene. He suspected the man  _ hated _ his new title. Utterly. Ill fitting armor on an unworthy body. But he knew, if Bull addressed him thusly--the matter would require his full heart.

 

“The Iron Bull.” Cullen called back, just as gravely, White Luck nickering softly, unable to be soothed by Cullen’s hand as he saddled him, readying their departure for home at last.

 

“Give me your word, and I will give you mine.”

 

The Inquisitor’s first reaction was to question the odd request, before realization settled on him like a hammerblow.

 

On Dorian too.

 

“No...no no. No!”

 

Dorian seized Bull by his brace, thinking stupidly that he could physically compel the qunari to address him. Gently, oh so heartbreakingly gently, Bull pried him loose and stood before the Inquisitor.

 

“Give me your word.” He said again, one eyed stare firm in conviction. “And I will give you mine.”

 

Cullen offered his hand.

 

Bull took it.

 

The two men shook. Their understanding as wordless and implicit and enduring as their love.

 

“She don’t need to be out there alone. And if she’s ready to do  _ whatever it takes _ like she says, --and shit, I gotta tell you, I believe her-- her heart’s too good for that. Somebody’s gotta keep her outta that kinda darkness. And that’s something I know well. So I’ll make sure she comes back, well and  _ whole _ . And when I’m gone  _ you _ . “ Bull pressed an insistent finger into the Commander’s breastplate convincing Dorian that the metal  _ bent. _ “You make sure he stays the same.”

 

Cullen nodded, Bull’s intent already understood. 

 

Dorian fumed, burned alive in his anger. It’s supposed to be different here, down here he’s not supposed to be alone. It is different down here damnit! “A-MA-TUS! How  _ dare _ you make such decisions without me!”

 

“And if I told you, jameel-bas, would you just let me go?”

 

“Absolutely not. But Maker fucking take you, you bloody bastard, I would have liked to have the opportunity to tell you ‘no’ in private. Now I’m forced to make a whole scene like some child throwing a tantrum for all to see. But you know what, I don’t bloody  _ care _ . Not you too! I won’t lose another. No!”

 

The hothouse orchid wilted under his own heat, he reined in his rage, measuring his next words as carefully as he could manage.

 

“Bull, do not go. You may not come back.  _ I _ may not even be here if you do come back.”

 

The wound appeared on his face, struck with the possibility that Dorian may not wait for him to return. And Bull  knew better than to expect that, didn't even hold a twinge of resentment for it. Dorian had shit to do, shit that needed him, and Bull wouldn't be the iron that held him fast from it. 

 

Didn't mean though, that it wouldn't hurt.

 

“That's why then, amatus, you have this.” Bull placed a wide open palm against Dorian’s chest, where he knew a broken half of a dragon’s tooth lay. “No matter how far.”

 

The mage did not require the other half of the bon mot, having never forgotten when Bull uttered it whole, freshly dislodged from the maw of a dragon. 

 

They always leave, Dorian thought. For their wives and careers, for honor, they always leave. And he was so fucking  _ foolish _ to build a pearl on the grain of hope that The Iron Bull would be different. “So this,” The cobra didn’t even have the venom to unfurl his hood and hiss, to lodge some parting bite that stung with poison that sickened slowly as time wore on. The cobra lay down with slumped shoulders, tearing his gaze from Bull’s face. It was supposed to be different down here. “This is how it ends then?”

 

“No.” The Bull groaned, feeling Dorian’s hurt. Thick fingers pushed obdurate chin high, and reforged the connection between their three eyes. “My love.” Bull never….Sex and sexuality was public, Bull was always free with his appetites but his affection, one never saw his affection unless it was expressly meant for them. Dorian shivered, Dorian cried. Bull  _ never _ . “My love,” He repeated to make his point plain. “This ain’t how it ends. This is how it changes.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jameel-bas: My made up qunlat word for 'pretty/precious thing'


	4. Cullen: Little Things

“The Light shall lead her safely  
Through the paths of this world, and into the next  
The Veil holds no uncertainty for her,  
And she will know no fear of…”

Cullen clutched the phylactery, felt it’s unnatural warmth, hope balanced on a rise of temperature that would indicate her nearness, her closeness.

Her coming back.

But it remained barely tepid, no warmer than a quick press of her lips to his skin. Yet so long as that kiss didn’t grow cold, it was enough.

“And she will know no fear of death, for the Maker  
Shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword.”

He concluded his morning prayers with a kiss to the glass along with the benediction, “Maker, your will be done,” and rose from his knees.

A soldier prepared their body for war, they wore armor, practiced with their weapons, anticipated and strategized against their enemies’ strengths, exploited their enemies’ weaknesses. Wars were endured this way, won this way.

He prepared himself for those large battles, for the hole in his chest where his heart used to be and the burning ache of it. He expected, anticipated, the cold and lonely nights. He understood that his nightmares would return with fiery vengeance, the howling in his mind resurging to take advantage of his momentary weakness, especially now that he had not her _sound_ to shout back the screaming.

He trained himself to bear the lingering sorrowful stares and the thoughtful but ultimately useless overtures from the others. “I am here if you need anything, Filius.” Dorian had taken to new vocabulary-- Sorora _and_ Amatus now lost to him.

“We’re here to help you Curly.”

“You got sommat you want murdered, just point!”

_He’ll need you, all of you._

It amazed him how right she was.

And so the soldier endured, throwing body and heart into battle. He had to, she trusted him, and Andraste fucking preserve him, if he was failure at everything else; at protecting her, being a good Commander, a good man for her, a decent man worthy of her-- since he failed all of that he would at least do this One Thing.

He would be a good Inquisitor--not better--convinced that no one could wear the title better than she--but good.

Trevelyan Manor lay deserted behind him, devoid of living being. Some of the servants scattered to their homes, unwilling to remain in a house abandoned by their Lord for fear revenge against the family might put them in danger. Rumor of Ostison’s ire spread throughout the city and into the surrounding countryside. Snubbing the son of the teryn at the altar was apparently something one did not do if they wished their family to remain accepted members of society. The macabre display hung in the family courtyard promised only more, possibly escalated, retaliations.

So the Trevelyans came with him, as did any servant who did not have a home to flee to. Mother, Father, and Son kept to themselves, their little enclave of catatonic grief. The pyreing of Dame Trevelyan was still fresh, the smell of char and incense still clinging to his mantle.

It pleased him they didn’t cause more trouble, put up more of a fuss as they were led away from their home. But he still kept wary and watchful eye over them knowing there was no gratitude here for providing safe harbor, just resigned acceptance--defeat even.

Inquisitor Rutherford glared at Lord Trevelyan, saw his grief, and fought down the urge to reach out in sympathy.

**

“Easy easy! Easy boy!” White Luck bucked under him, unable, unwilling to be controlled by his master. The white Ferelden courser huffed and kicked, upsetting Cullen in his saddle, making the ride up the Frostbacks nearly unbearable. The horse stopped eating, even turned his head aside when Cullen brought out the peppermints--his favorite--always guaranteed to earn him a soft whinny and a happy nuzzle. No longer. An evening’s brush down turned into a harrowing, the horse kicked and bit and reared, refusing all comfort. Once home at Skyhold, he walked to the stall where Jackson once slept, bedded down in the hay and would not be moved.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Master Dennet remarked, “When a horse would cry for a hart. I hope they return or your luck might run out.”

Leliana sent word ahead of the change in regime so Skyhold at large was prepared to see his pale face leading the retinue of warriors returned. The people crowded the gates to welcome them home, the horns blew, they cheered, and every last one of them looked past him, straining their ears for her hunter’s cry, thinking it all one big unfunny joke.

Inquisitor Rutherford prepared himself for the outpouring of grief from the freedmen living in Skyhold. They packed the tiny chapel leaving little offerings at the Lady’s feet for her safe return. They reminded him that he was not alone in his loss, that her love wasn’t only just for him--or Dorian--or her friends. He, however, did not expect to see Krem among the worshipers, head bowed, Stitches and Grim on either side of him.

The Chargers reminded him that she was not the only one among the missing.

The soldier expected the feeling of utter _wrong_ of stepping into the War Room without her. Of hearing people struggle with what to call him. For Josephine’s sake, he stopped snapping at everyone who started to call him Inquisitor, ‘investiture of power’ she reminded him.

“She hated it too, but wore it well. So will you, Inquisitor.” He bore the new name like little pinpricks, tiny inoculations that he prayed he never became accustomed to.

This was temporary.

_She will come back!_

He grunted vague assent, eyes fixed on the War Table. Evelyn’s place was across from him, but it was not empty this first day, Cassandra stood there assuming his former role though no one asked.

“We must assess our new situation.” Josephine began, delicate in voice as if she were holding on to some terrible news. “It is not easy to say but our overtures to Ostwick…”

“Were a complete waste of time, I think we all know Ambassador.” Cassandra answered.

“No.” Josephine grit her teeth and took a deep breath. “They were not.”

The soldier trained himself to fight the big things, withstand them, bear their weight and injury, unaware that it would be the _little_ things that would kill him outright.

He knew that piece of parchment she unhooked from her clipboard, could see, even from a distance, her name scrawled in black ink. “We’ve come back.” Josephine started. “With more mouths to feed. And with a war to fight. And…”

Her hand trembled a bit, but she smoothed the wedding contract on the table, pinning the curled edges down with Evelyn’s favorite War Table token, a mabari knight stolen from his chess set.

“I must convince Lord Trevelyan to speed up the payment of the first per annum. The contract states delivery six months after the nuptials but our needs…”

“No! Do not...Do. Not!” Cullen strangled, could barely believe what he was hearing. “Do not tell me that _thing_ is still _valid_!”

“It is, because we need it to be! This was what we went there for, and we have it now. I spoke with…”

“And you’re going to enforce it? You’re going to tell me her marriage is...”

“Legal in the eyes of Man, Holy in the eyes of the Maker. And we need to take this now, to Lord Trevelyan, and convince him to pay.”


	5. Josephine: Hammers and Nails

She wished so very much that she could tell him how it hurt to say those words.

 

“Legal in the eyes of Man, Holy in the eyes of the Maker.”

 

Maybe it would calm the contempt in his eyes, the burning, directionless rage plainly seen. She knew Cullen didn’t hate her, she hoped anyway, and she really hadn’t the chance to tell him that all this brought as much joy to her as it did him. She took no pleasure in this, never had, hadn’t since it was her hand that twisted the knife in Evelyn’s back in the first place. It was Josephine who said first: ‘This must be done. Marry this man.’ Knowing exactly who he was and what he’d done to her so long ago.

 

In truth, she was just as weary, just as hurt, but Evelyn left them, left her, all of them with the solemn duty to uphold the Inquisition. 

 

And if this was what that meant, if she had to stare down both Gareth and Cullen to get what she needed to fulfill that duty.

 

So be it.

 

The Inquisition would not falter on pride or love.

 

“I can’t, I won’t let you uphold this. There must be another way.” He looked shabby, unkempt, depressed was a better word but she preferred to skirt around that. Josephine would need to speak with Cassandra, perhaps Knight-Captain Rylen as well to ensure the new Inquisitor maintained a level of presentability at all times.

 

“We’ve not the time to find it.” 

 

“Make time!” He fired back.

 

“Cullen, Josephine.” Leliana interceded while Cassandra remained silent and ill-at-ease. “This new arrangement will be difficult for us all, but we must cooperate. Remember there was a time when we didn’t have a Herald, and we were just fine.”

 

“If this were any other matter, you would be right Sister Nightingale. But not this. I will not be complicit in this.”

 

“And have our people starve? Our keeps mutiny? Our army crumble in the field?” Cassandra tried to sound convincing, almost succeeded. But the romantic in her made her voice fall away into a tiny sigh at the end.

 

“Think of what you’re asking me to do! Think of what you're asking her to do when she comes back. I will  _ not!” _

 

“Stop!” Josephine’s anger boiled over just like it had back at Ostwick. She dropped her parchment board, slamming both her dainty hands on the War Table reminding them all those hands once wielded Antivan steel to deadly purpose.

 

“Did you ever pay attention Cullen! To how many times Evelyn was  _ forced _ to do the things she didn’t wish to? Make the hard choices that hurt, that killed? Did you not see any of that?! You are like a hammer to which every problem is a nail! We have enough hammers! ‘Strength works through action; intelligence works through plans.’ We must now call upon both. The Inquisitor is  _ required _ to consider  _ all _ avenues and options, not just one. Or do you think yourself above such things? Above her?”

 

She shamed him, obvious in the furious and instant flush on his face.

 

Inquisitor Rutherford ground out a quiet “Never.” Then fell silent.

 

Cassandra presented her inventory of their forces, they were holding but barely.

 

Leliana gave account of the situation in Val Royeaux with the Civil War and the Divine.

 

“All is quiet there for now and since Ostwick, the rebel forces have made no other overtures anywhere else. I have spoken with our captive, the Initiate Amantha Bardo. She swears she knows nothing beyond what she’s told.”

 

“And that is?” Cassandra sneered, folding her arms. 

 

“That her prisoner transport mutinied somewhere between Skyhold and Griffon Wing. That Knight-Captain...former Knight-Captain Celedona convinced her jailors to defect. They went to Val Royeaux seeking to rejoin the Chantry under assumed names and fabricated histories but there they were recruited by a dissident faction eager to see ‘sanity’ restored to the Sunburst Throne.”

 

“Has she given us names, locations, plans?” The Inquisitor settled, this was a task to which he was better suited. Cassandra chose him well and Josephine never gainsayed him on his martial assessments. He was a good Commander, she reasoned with herself, trying to assuage the seed of guilt that threatened to grow like a weed.

  
He was a good Commander but a poor diplomat, too blunt, too rigid, no give in him. 

 

_ But think on what you were asking him to do, _ the guilt whispered.  _ Would you be so ready to uphold such things that would keep you from your own heart? _

 

“But I already have!” She railed back, the carven griffon in her pocket, made of wood but when she closed her fist around it for comfort it burned like metal under a flame.

 

_ Yes you did, without so much as a single protest. Yet you shame him for fighting _ ?

 

“I’m trying! I’m working with my family, I’m working the deals with other merchant houses to secure contracts without a bond of marriage and… I’m trying the only way I know how.”

 

_ So is he _ .

 

“No.” Leliana answered Cullen’s question reminding Josephine there was a War Council going on and that she had best pay attention. Leave those whimsies of happily ever after where they belonged, in the songs she used to sing. “She claims she knows not.”

 

Cullen considered the information. “During her trial and judgement she didn’t seem too bright or ambitious. She’s a follower and a bad one at that. I believe her, she doesn’t know anything.” 

 

Josephine watched as the Inquisitor moved his tokens across the table, spreading them thinly to every corner. He snatched the mabari knight, allowing the wedding contract it held open to curl back up with the light sound of crackling parchment. No one dared questioned him when he tucked the figure into his glove. She pet her own pocket, her griffon was still there.

 

_ We will carry pieces of them always, to serve when we cannot hold them whole.  _

 

Spring would come soon, her own marriage with it. She held her griffon tighter, not ready, never ready, to let Rainier go.

 

“All hands to every Circle, there will not be another Ostwick on my watch. My personal guard will see to Circle Skyhold as will Bull’s Chargers. Send Vale’s Irregulars to the Circle Tower in Ferelden, Michel de Chevin and his soldiers to Montsimmard.”

 

“Inquisitor.” Cassandra interrupted, halting the movement of the tokens into Orlais. “The Orlesian Circles are not ours, not yet. They have not yet adopted the Edict of Val Royeaux that grants autonomy to each Circle’s mages. Senior Enchanter Fiona is in correspondence with her colleagues in White Spire and Montsimmard to persuade them otherwise.”

 

“That bodes very ill. Do they support the rebels?” He gripped his tokens tightly in his fist, no doubt unsettled by the prospect of fighting some of the best trained mages in Thedas.

 

“They claim neutrality, a dangerous stance. Whichever side they choose will see the war tip in their favor. Persuading them is our foremost priority second only to protecting the Circles we already have. I will work with Rylen to coordinate our forces.”

 

“Forces,” Josephine sighed, keeping the sound out of her breath to prevent that sigh from turning into a pained sounding groan. She collected the marriage contract and conversation stilled, three pairs of eyes turned to her, waiting for her next words.

 

“Forces we will not be able to equip, or feed, or support without.” She crumpled the contract in her hand. “This. I do not need your assistance, either way it must be done. I would prefer a united front, and the words themselves carry more impressionable weight if delivered with the Inquisitor’s mouth. The choice is yours, Inquisitor, but when we adjourn here, I will go and speak to Lord Trevelyan with or without you. I am sorry. Really Cullen, I am.”

 

He did not answer her, or accept her apology, he simply fell in step behind her once their meeting was done, following quietly to the Bann’s quarters.

 

**

 

“An estate in the Lower City if you bring back her head, one in the Upper if you return my mother’s killer alive and unspoiled to me.”

 

Josephine did not recognize the soldier who nodded and dismissed himself, but knew him to be a Marcher in the way he bowed. He could have been one of Trevelyan’s own men, she hoped he was and that Gareth wasn’t wooing away what little forces Skyhold had left.

 

“Lord Trevelyan.” She bowed, her Antivan one. They once bonded over her mother tongue, Bann Trevelyan had a good mind for it, nigh flawless in his accent. Were he not an abusive, selfish, disgusting cad she would likely enjoy his company. He had humor and was an excellent conversationalist, able to carry on with the right amount of politics, gossip, and small talk.

 

His smile was always warm and inviting, too bad it was mostly fake, and even Josephine--committed and seasoned player of The Game as she was--had a hard time discerning that smile as fake.

 

“Ambassador Montilyet.” 

 

He returned her bow in the Marcher way, one fist over the heart the other behind his back.

 

“Sister Nightingale.” Gareth tipped his head in Leliana’s direction, and the woman, begrudgingly returned it.

 

And that was the end of the greetings as there was not enough formal courtesy or respectability politics in the whole of the Maker’s Creation would allow either man to recognize the other.

 

With that frosty and awkward silence put away, Josephine began.

 

“Are your accommodations suitable, are your wife and son comfortable?”

 

“As well as they can be, thank you. No bugs in the sheets, and our chamberpots are emptied this time around.”

 

Josephine knew, she made Dorian swear not to pull  _ that _ little stunt again.

 

“The food however,” Lord Trevelyan continued. “Leaves much to be desired.”

 

“That’s because there isn’t any, and that leads us to our visit today.” The contract came out, crumpled at the middle, a small tear at one of the edges.

 

“Lord Trevelyan, we have come here to ask that you honor the terms of this contract as they are valid.”

 

Gareth reached his hand and Josephine placed the paper within it. Evelyn’s father then placed it to the side with a cold, cruel laugh. “Of course it’s still valid. Did you think her little stunt deemed it otherwise? Manmi...” 

 

Bann Trevelyan choked, a fist of grief squeezing his airways shut. “My mother worked for months with her barristers to write this contract. It is iron clad, it has to be, Ostisons are notorious for breaking their Trevelyan contracts. She wanted to make sure history would  _ finally _ not repeat. She worked so hard for this, all her life she tried to win us our due and those bastards blocked us at every turn.”

 

He tore on, Josephine let him. Best to let him vent, the eased pressure likely to make him more receptive to her demands.

 

“My mother should have been a ternya, she was promised to Teryn Ostison’s father but... _ something _ made them turn us away, void the agreement. I always wondered if it was because of the elf, or because of being a mudskin, but no matter. I was next. But they’d rather wed their daughters to lesser sons of lesser houses and so forth and so on, all down my children until Evelyn. We  _ built _ that fucking city, our blood mortars the stones that protect it. We should own Ostwick, we  _ will _ own it. That was my mother’s fondest wish, devoted the later part of her life and  _ all  _ of mine building us up, making us beyond reproach so that when the time came, our kingdom that we were promised would turn from mud to marble. And my ungrateful  _ whore _ of a daughter thinks she can turn away decades of planning and sacrifice, turn her back on family, let my mother’s killer go free for  _ him _ .”

 

Gareth shoved a finger in Inquisitor Rutherford’s direction, and Josephine was ready to intercede between the two men lest they come to blows over the epithet against Evelyn’s honor. But Cullen’s hand remained gripped upon his sword, unmoving, the tears in Bann Trevelyan’s eyes possibly staying his hand.

 

This was a man firmly within the anger stage of his grief, beloved mother and family home lost within hours of each other. Decades of struggling and dreaming crumbled to nothing, all on her whispered plea to  _ fly. _

 

“Yes, Ambassador, the contract is valid and not even death would sunder it.”

 

“Then you would be amenable to…”

 

“Ambassador Montilyet, Sister Nightingale. I would appreciate any and all word concerning my grandson or his mother brought to my immediate attention.”

 

“Bann Trevelyan, the per annum…” Josephine pressed.

 

“I am  _ not _ interested in discussing financials with you right now. Return at a later time,  _ con su permiso _ .”

 

“ _ Por favor _ ,” Josephine pleaded. “I respect your grief but you must understand the urgency of our…”

 

Armor clanked and shifted behind her, Inquisitor Rutherford finally breaking his silence.

 

“Your mother died for you, Lord Trevelyan, I will honor her sacrifice. Evelyn asked us to keep you all safe, I will honor her wish. But utter a slur against her like that again, Gareth, and you will learn the difference between keeping you safe and keeping you  _ whole _ .”

  
Gareth stiffened and turned his back to them. “Send me your requirements, I will have the per annum paid within the fortnight.”   
  


Josephine nodded, and thanked the Inquisitor with a grateful glance realizing that sometimes it was still useful to keep the hammer handy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miraphora is responsible for some key dialogue going on here. Thank her with me by checking her out!!


	6. The Iron Bull: Irony for the Iron Bull

She was difficult to find.

Good.

Meant she was being smart. She stayed off the main roads, ate her food cold, no evidence of campfires. The people he spoke to in the towns and villages between Ostwick and wherever here was hadn’t seen anyone fitting his description.

Tall woman.

Thick vine-like hair.

Dark skinned.

He realized a few days in that ‘dark skinned’ up here meant any bastard with a tan. Unfortunately, he had to change his tactics.

Mudskin.

“Well there’s Agatha, she got a bit ‘o color to ‘er. Workin ‘nem fields as she is.”

“No no no, I mean darker.” Bull pressed, shooing away the Agatha girl.

The farmer looked at him blankly and Bull sighed.

“Mudskinned lady.”

The farmer laughed. “Oh! Well why dinnat you say so. Nope, seen no one like that. We bathe round here innat right Agatha!”

Given the low opinion of their own of darker colors, Bull was surprised these folks paid him any mind at all. But he supposed his eyepatch and the axe the size of most grown men were reasons enough to cooperate with him, so ready to believe that he’d cut them down for refusing to answer a question rather than shrug and go about his business.

There were perks to being the ‘savage bloodthirsty qunari’ and this was one of them, as well as the occasional free drink and easy lays from folks all curious about ‘riding the Bull’. And damn him, he played those up sometimes when coin and personal morale was low. But other times, on days like today, when his patience was thin and the strength of his heart thinner, he really

_Really_

Hated that kind of crap.

Bull left the farm but pissed in the rose bush on his way out. Petty, but shit, petty felt good.

The Boss returned to her roots as a hunter, she was smoke in a windstorm, hard to find, hard to catch.

Well.

For anybody but him.

Maybe two weeks or so into the hunt he picked up her trail, a broken arrow shaft, red fletching. He could call it a coincidence, was prepared to, but then he found a tuft of white hair snagged in a thatch of brambles and that coincidence became a full blown clue.

She was near.

He gained on her, sleeping in the saddle of his Abyssal Hangtooth, riding day and night and in weather that most sensible souls sought shelter from. The mountains, Vimmark he vaguely recalled, pushed her due west direction a bit to the south. But she stayed away from the beach areas, preferring instead to remain in the scrub forest that hemmed the mountains.

On the ninth day since finding the arrow, he found her.

“Hey, now look who–”

_Thwip._

The arrow landed hairs from his big toe, a puff of wind in either direction and he’d have a hole in his foot. It came from a spot above him, a rock shelf like a balcony overlooking a courtyard. There was a narrow-mouthed cave behind it, no doubt where she slept the night before. Behind her haggard looking self was an equally haggard looking white hart, a hank of fur missing from his foreleg.

“What the fuck Boss! I know you heard me, Hissy Face and I’ve been makin’ enough noise for y’all to hear me, and I’ve been singing our song for the last mile so I _know_ you knew it was me. So again, what the fuck Boss?!”

 _Our Song,_ Bull thought, wry smirk pulling at his lips. Not really theirs because Dorian hated it in that way Dorian hates things he secretly loves. Krem came up with the words, Stitches and Rocky make up the tune, and Maryden sang it every time the two of them came into Herald’s Rest.

The Bull and the Magister Fair.

“I’m _not_ a Magister and I am most certainly _not_ fair!” Dorian used to screech, but the corners of his mouth never dipped when he heard it so…

Their song.

Boss didn’t look remorseful for almost having skewered him, in fact she hadn’t even dropped her weapon.

“Boss?”

“Go back!”

Oh. So that’s why. “No chance Boss.”

Another arrow sliced the air next to him, he only liked that trick when there was fruit to throw and happy, giggling (not screaming, dying _not screaming, dying_ ) children to watch.

“Don’t make me tell you again.”

Bull laughed, there was a very short list of Inner Circle folks the Boss could take in a fight. He was not on that list. “Or you’ll do what, prick me with your little needles? I ain’t going back Boss, too many assholes that way, plus I already missed the boat with my all my friends on it.”

“Then catch another!” She hollered, and even her holler sounded tired. From the looks of her, she hadn’t slept, barely ate, and he could see a faint green light coming from her left hand as it listed away from her body, like being pulled away from her by fishhooks. She must be activating that phylactery.

“Evelyn,” He called, wiping the joviality from his voice. “I’m not going back. You can either accept that or we can fight about it and you eventually accept that.”

She bristled, possibly questioning the merits of reaching for another arrow.

“Not that kind of fight Boss, I promised him I’d bring you back whole.”

Now that got a reaction. Her tensed shoulders slumped like 80 pounds of invisible bullshit and heartache just got magically dropped on her. And she looked confused, like the reason she looked so damned tired was because she’d been fighting herself this whole ride west.

“I… _can’t_ go back. The Iron Bull.”

And she looked supremely guilty that she had to say that. Ashamed. Like that fight between choosing family or love that made her run in a wedding dress was still going on.

“I didn’t mean it that way either.”

Her shoulders slumped again, 100 pounds this time.

“You say you’re ready to do anything to get your nephew back right?” He asked.

She nodded gravely, even the hart behind her gave a little whine of understanding.

“Well anything don’t mean just getting creative with your fingernail pulling tactics. You gotta be ready to get in the shit. Threaten a person’s family, their children, their grandchildren. You ready to do that?”

She nodded again, too quickly.

“No Boss, you ain’t. _Nobody’s_ ready for that kind of commitment. And I’ma need you to listen to the former Ben-Hassrath on that tip. So I’m here to make sure it never gets that far. Other Boss wants you back safe and whole, that means body and mind.”

Bull made a mental note to have an internal laugh about this later. What he look like trying to keep someone else out of the darkness when he was still tip-toeing around his own puddles of depression? Shit like Seheron, like the re-education camps, that shit never never leaves you. And you start to question the wisdom of leaving that behind when shitheads like that farmer still look at you like you’re one wrong answer away from a killing spree. Wouldn’t it just be easier to be who they expect you to be?

But then he recalled that Maskan in Ostwick. Sarebaas the Scarred and Sweet Khabbazad. They didn’t let what people thought define them.

If only it could be so easy.

“Iron Bull n-,”

Bull held up his hands in supplication. “I know. I already know. We might be at this for a while. So I gave a man my word, and he gave me his back. We’re going to look after the other’s heart. Make sure they stay safe. So pincushion me if you like Boss. All it’s gonna do is annoy me. But I am not going back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and not as good as it should be but ehhh.  
> Also short. But eehhhhh.


	7. Evelyn: Pride Goeth

The Iron Bull was a piece of stringy chicken caught between her teeth and that bitch wasn’t coming out no matter how many sharp objects she used to lodge him loose.

Having him around though wasn’t so much of an improvement over not having him around. She still woke with phantom tears in her eyes in the middle of the night a good 3 hours before they were due to resume traveling again.

Sometimes when those nightmares eased her awake with the cold dread still frosting over her heart, she’d find him awake, staring at the sky, or unsoundly asleep, muttering unintelligible things that sounded like “no”, “stop,” and “get the kids.”

Jackson too didn’t take very well to his new traveling partner, snorting in abject disgust whenever Bull tossed Hissy Face a rabbit or a mouse for her morning feeding. He whined, nudging his mistress with one of his many pronged antlers.

_I want to go home!_

“I know,” she patted his nose and stuffed a soft and moldering apple in his mouth before he could whine again. “But we can’t.”

After Corypheus-on-the-Mountaintop her anchor quieted, the pulsing green light and the stinging discomfort it brought settling into an almost inert glow, like a jagged sliver of emerald had been shoved into her palm. No more pain, not even the buzzing of pins-and-needles discomfort.

Nothing.

Until the phylactery.

Obsessive in her use of it, she kept it active near constantly, searching for that feeling, that _pull_ or that _warmth_ that would tell her she was getting closer.

Nothing.

Just the same light tug in her gut that turned her body west and told her to keep marching.

So she...now they...marched, her anchor lighting from the inside like the embers of a dead fire looking for kindling to catch.

**

“Help! Maker spit on you whoresons! Help me, someone please!”

Hearing the shout, Evelyn kicked Jackson into a gallop, The Iron Bull pursuing closely behind, following the sound of shouted curses and ringing steel to find an old man assailed by bandits.

Evelyn laughed with the draw of her bow, so far from Ferelden and yet it felt like the Hinterlands all over again.

There were seven of them, scrawny looking creatures, a mix of races and sexes all covered up by patchwork armor united in the single purpose of robbing an old farmer on his way to market.

“Serah! Serah! Please! Help!” They had him pinned under his cart, a dwarven foot lodged on his chest while the thief's compatriots stripped the cart of its contents and un-yoked the mules for good measure.

“Time is a flat circle Boss.” Bull’s voice echoed her mirth, remembering long passed days of clearing endless farmsteads of these simple kind of brigands.

“I know Bull, let’s give ‘em these hands.”

They went to work, forgetting that the job was eminently easier when there were four. But with only two…

“Fuck, Boss!” Bull took a slash to the ribs that he never would have taken if Cassandra or Rainier or Sera or Solas or Cole or Vivienne or Dorian or Krem had been watching his flank.

“Shit! Bull! I’m coming!”

And it wasn’t as though she _wasn’t_ watching his flank, she was all too aware of it. Yet she was powerless to assist as her own assailants bore down upon her, forcing her to keep moving lest they get inside her range making her bow and by extension her, useless.

Evelyn was no melee fighter, she could throw and take several punches in a bar brawl, but put a dagger in her hands and she was the kind of adequate that was more dangerous than helpful.

“Boss!”

Penny-ante thieves or not, four was greater than one and Bull, swinging his axe in wide haphazard arcs just to keep them off him, was going to take serious injury or worse trying to balance that equation.

Meanwhile two punk rogues and a mage sliced and sizzled at her, chipping away at her energy while chipping away at her skin, blocking any attempts to aid her friend.

“Put down the fucking bow and stab them!”

That breath earned him another scar across the midsection. Bull grunted, then roared, kicking out with his bad leg with the bum knee almost starting an avalanche of flesh and anger that would have ended in his death. But Bull kept his feet while the faceless marauder lost his and Bull turned four into three with heel ground into the bastard’s forehead.

The math got a little easier after that.

“Drusus!”

One of her punk rogues shouted, turning when he ought not have, forgetting about the woman he was inches away from gutting. He was inside her range, no space or time to nock or draw, but an arrow was still as deadly in the hand as it was fired from a bow.

She smote that enemy with her red-fletched arrow, gripping it in her palm and driving the blade into his neck.

“Ahh!”

They both screamed. Because while one rogue was momentarily, fatally distracted, the other knew better and saw her opportunity to strike, deep, in the back, kidney shot.

Evelyn crumpled like tissue paper on Satinalia Sunday.

“Boss! No! Get up Boss. Get up Evelyn!”

 _Hard to do_ , she thought, _in the middle of an ass beating._

Still, moved more by insufferable pride than will to live (because I will not die at the hands of these _fucking kids_ fuck you very much!) Evelyn slipped blood slick fingers around a vial of swirling smoke, popped the cork because she didn't’ have strength or freedom of movement or time to smash it, and slipped into invisible shadow right before a dagger had the chance to find her jugular. She rolled with all her energy away from the blow, the spectacle of her disappearance granting her exactly 2 heartbeats of surprise to execute the move.

The female rogue shouted, calling for the mage to light the whole area on fire. Invisibility counted for naught when you were burning. But before the mage could twist the Fade to his whim, an arrow fired from shadow pierced him in the neck and he went down spitting blood rather than spells.

Evelyn’s cover broke, she emerged balanced on one knee another arrow already drawn and aimed at the swordsman coming for Bull at his blind spot.

The shot didn’t kill, striking the asshole’s scale mail, the clinking rings warning enough for Bull to pivot and tear through him, throwing his full weight into the deathblow. The arrow’s blade wasn’t strong enough or lucky enough to pierce but Bull’s axe was.

The warrior fell, half the man he used to be.

The dwarf keeping the old man down decided to cut his losses before he himself got cut. But Bull’s Reaver fired blood ignited a fury in him, made him petty and vindictive and vengeful, this one made the right choice far too late. Bull caught him as he got his feet in the stirrups on the mule, nothing else made it.

Two rogues still stood though the equation remained unbalanced, tipped in the Inquisitor’s favor somewhere between moments of flying limbs and aspirated blood. Both broke into a dead run, dropping their weapons and fleeing, flinching as they ran expecting arrows to catch them in the back.

But Evelyn’s injuries necessitated mercy, vision too black around the edges to shoot straight.

Bull and B remained still once the battle ended, pride the only thing keeping either of them upright, waiting for the thieves to circle back and redouble their assault.

“I think they’re gone.” The farmer groaned, pushing old bones up and out of the dirt.

Both fighters, relieved, collapsed.


	8. Evelyn: The Mage

The soft green glow of creation magic eased her back into consciousness to see a man hovering over her, dirty blonde and just plain dirty hair kept out of his face by an equally filthy red ribbon.

“Welcome back,” his coarse voice matched the patchy unkempt beard around his mouth, worry lines grooved into a face still a bit too young to be so haggard looking. He was 35 going on 70, but being a mage--Evelyn understood.

Evelyn craned her neck from her sickbed looking for The Iron Bull.

The man shook his head, green wreathed hand on her chest, gently pushing her back onto her straw pallet. “Your friend is resting, he’ll be okay too.”

“How’d?” She voice guttered and stopped with a dry, painful sounding croak.

Her unnamed nurse tipped a glass of water to her lips and she drank greedily.

“No too fast,” he warned, “Or you’ll start--”

On cue, she gulped and coughed but still drank, convincing the mage she inhaled more than she swallowed. Once she drained the glass, eyes full of questions, the mage began answering them as best as he could intuit.

“The farmer you saved brought you here to his barn then came and got me. You’ve been out for 5 days.”

Evelyn panicked, clutching the gold chain around her neck pulling on her anchor’s power and pushing it into the phylactery. The blood inside glowed--tepid as always and still west.

The mage, horrified, jumped back blue magic arcing under his skin. “Templar!”

“Hey.” Bull struggled to sit up, but the stiff bandages around his abdomen allowed him only to lift his head. Still he curled his hand into a claw, ready to snatch at the mage. “She ain’t no Templar.”

“Then why does she?! Why are you here?! Have you come to…? Have they finally found me?” The lightning in his skin flared, crackling under his flesh making the all his wrinkles light with an eerie blue malevolence.

Injured badly with no weapons against a pissed off mage, both of them would be dead in seconds if this went wrong. Evelyn took her hand away from the phylactery, and raised them in surrender. “Who is ‘me’?”

“Serah,” The farmer came in, carrying trays of food and the loudest sound in the room became Evelyn and Bull’s moaning stomachs. “These are good people. They ain’t no templars. And even if they were, the Lady ‘Quisitor and the Black Divine made mages legal now.”

Bull passed a significant look to Evelyn, her palm wasn’t glowing now, wrapped in bandages, they must have mistaken the slash in her hand for an injury. She tucked it under her thighs. It didn’t seem like they knew who she was, but the situation still warranted some caution.

“We were always ‘legal’!” The mage spat, “People can’t be outlawed! If she’s not a Templar why does she carry a phylactery? What mage are you hunting like some animal! Going to drag them back to those prisons! Speak!”

The farmer cocked his head, puzzled. “You can’t hunt ‘postates no more. The Black Divine said…”

“For Maker’s sake she has a name!” Evelyn shouted earning her wince from Bull and refocused attention from the mage. Lightning sparked between his fingertips, one wrong answer and her journey would end here. And the other phylactery, the one at Cullen’s breast, goes cold. “Be calmed, I have a nephew, a little boy, his name is Masan. He’s missing. I only want…”

“To put him back under the Chantry’s foot! A little _boy_!”

“Do you listen at all? Or are you just going to kill us on general fucking principle! It doesn’t seem like anything I have to say matters to you.”

The mage crossed his arms, upsetting raggedy black and grey feathers from the cloak around his shoulders. “Fine. Say your piece.”

“Bad men took him, promising to remove his magic safely. It was front for a slaving ring. They take mage children, promise their families to make them normal--no,” Evelyn corrected herself. Normal was not the right word, implying that Masan was aberrant or deviant. Nothing about that child was either. “To take their magic away. But what they do is make them Tranquil and sell them as slaves. I need to find him.” She shook the vial of her nephew’s blood. “This is my way to find him and get him home.”

“Home? To exchange one kind of slavery for another!” His voice rose, but his hands dropped, the deadly magic dying on his fingertips.

“You’ll have to forgive him, Miss.” The farmer placed steaming bowls in front of all three before fishing a piece of parchment from his pocket. “He’s the village hermit, keeps to himself out in the caves by the mountains, he wouldn’t know the news. Here.”

The farmer added the parchment to the mage’s meal bearing the symbols of the Inquisition and the Sunburst Throne.

With trembling hands, the lightning fading from his eyes and skin, he picked up the paper and read. “‘By Order of Her Perfection, the Divine Victoria, all Circles Fallen are to be re-opened.’ This tells me nothing! What has changed?”

“Keep reading serah.” The farmer spoke with an odd air of pride.

“‘Furthermore the re-instituted Circles are hereby declared Free of Chantry…’ Free?”

“Yeah. F. R. E. E.” Bull spelled. “As in liberated, independent.”

“Self-governing, ” Evelyn supplied.

“Aye!” Agreed the farmer. “Templars been hanging these up on every mile post from Ostwick to Kirkwall. Maker’s Love, if only this happened sooner.”

The mage kept reading. “‘ Subject to governance by an elected council of mages?!’ The Cirlces will be run by the mages?”

He read and spoke no further until he finished. Then dragged his tired eyes back to the top and read again. Then again. Giving the two of them enough time to scarf down the food the farmer graciously supplied.

“You mean to say that this Inquisitor and this new Divine, who is a _mage_ by Andraste’s Ashes, brought back these New Circles run by mages, where they are free to come and go as they please? No more phylacteries, no more Templars?”

“No. Templars are still a thing. But they’re going to be what they were always meant to be, protectors. No more no less.”

“Protectors! You mean jailers.” Blue light flooded the room again, the mage’s skin suffused with his magic, even his eyes were whited out and replaced with an inward icy glow. “I don’t believe this! Any of this. It’s a trick.”

When the mage crumpled the paper, the old man screamed, tore it from his hands and smoothed it out, ironing away the crinkles in the paper with his hands. “Doesn’t matter if you believe it, it's true! And I’ll thank you _not_ to damage and old man’s property.”

He wheeled on the old man. “And how are you so sure? You _would_ be so quick to believe! You who have never had to step foot in a Circle. Who never watched a Harrowing, who never had Templars beat you half to death or lock you away for months without human contact! Of course someone like you would believe! This is nothing but a ploy, to rope in all the mages the war freed. Lure them in with pretty promises before the trap snaps shut tighter than it ever was before!”

The fight suddenly drained from him, he slumped and looked impossibly older. The blue light in his skin died, leaving pale and ashen flesh behind. “Kirkwall was for nothing. Half measures, no measures. Those people died for nothing. Every drop of blood shed in that city and in the war after, drips from those women’s hands.”

“You bite your bloody tongue serah! Healer or no, I’ll turn you outta my barn for speaking ill of the Divine or the Herald in my hearing!”

“Se-rah,” Evelyn raised herself up, humbled by the man’s ardent defense of a woman he didn’t know was sitting right in front of him. “You don’t don’t seem to be a mage, why does this matter so much to you?”

The farmer’s chest puffed, like he was suddenly filled, literally, with joy. “They told me I’d never see my Becca again. And I cried every day since those Templars took her away. For twenty years I missed my lil’ girl, convinced that she’d forgotten her old Da. And when the war started, I just knew the Maker took her in the fighting. Then one day she come up the road, screaming ‘Papa! Papa!’. And I tell you, it was the happiest day o’ my life right after the day she was born. I thought I died and gone to Gold. ‘How?’ I asked her.”

He held out the copy of the Edict of Val Royeaux, “She gimme this and said, ‘I’m free.’”

The healer kept quiet, apparently one anecdote of a happy ending wasn’t going to be enough to sway him. Though he had manners enough to keep his scoff to himself, looking sheepish when Evelyn’s ears caught the chuff.

It hurt to hold back her tears, pained Evelyn physically. Whether it be this father’s love, or the evidence that mages _were free_ , she didn’t know. Didn’t care. This was a win in her column, the first in a while, though the ledger was far from balanced. She turned away from the mage and back to the farmer asking, “Where is she now?”

“She’s gone to the Circle in Ferelden, to help them transition into the new way a’ doing things.”

“Why’d she return?”

The farmer folded the Edict back up along well worn lines that suggested that paper was a daily digest for him, replacing it in his breast pocket. “She was always that kind a’ girl. Sweet as summer grass.”

“I am glad your daughter was restored to you Serah, as I am grateful for your assistance with me and my friend here.”

“The gratitude’s mine Mistress. Them thieves woulda stuck me good hada you and your qunari friend not come ‘long.”

Bull nodded, gratitude exchanged and turned to the mage. “Gotta thank you too, for stitching us up _and_ not killing us.”

The mage snorted humorlessly. “I’m tired of killing. Hid in the mountains to get away from it but it seems the world has moved on since I was last in it. Changed. I’ll never trust a Circle. I’m definitely never going back to one that’s for damned sure. And I’ll never trust a Templar farther than I can Slam them. Which I’ve done, and is admittedly very far but you get my meaning.”

“I believe, Serah Mage,” The farmer’s food was hearty and warm. Hunger was the best seasoning but this bowl of goulash didn’t really need much of it. Something in her chest squeezed and that momentary comfort slipped away into longing. Every little thing in this damn world reminded her of him. Ferelden goulash, with the little bits of blood sausage, was his favorite. “No one’s telling you to do either anymore.”

“Too little and far too late.” He answered rising from the floor, jarring loose a few more feathers until a very clear bald spot appeared where the cloak was worn threadbare. “You two will be fine. Change the bandages at midday and again at sundown. A poultice of elfroot should carry you the rest of the way back to health. Rest until then. I hope you find your nephew and I hope you find him before they take away his soul. And if by chance not, I hope you have the courage to end the little one’s suffering.”

“Help me find him.”

The Iron Bull settled back to rest but jerked fully upright at Evelyn’s blurted offer. “Boss!”

The mage paused in the doorway.

“Think about it Bull, three’s better than two. He’s a mage, better yet, a healing one. What happens the next time we get our asses kicked and there’s no helpful farmer around?”

“We just have to make sure we don’t get our asses kicked again.”

“IB we still got our asses kicked even when there were _four_ of us.”

The qunari groaned, tacit admission that she was right on that point.

“And you, you don’t have run or hide anymore. And you don’t have to come with me at all. I’m just asking because you seem like a decent guy and you have the skills I need. Come with us or don’t, but you seem like the type that’d be all for rescuing a little boy from a terrible fate. World’s changed, for the better I hope, and you get to choose how you be apart of it now. Isn’t that what mages wanted?”

“Yes.” The mage took his hand from the door.

“Yes what?” Evelyn asked.

“Just yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like it, let me know.


	9. The Iron Bull: Teach Me How To Dagger, Teach Me, Teach Me How to Dagger

The mage really cocked up his first impressions, lunging for Evelyn, blue fire in his eyes ready to immolate her for the mere suspicion of being a templar. Didn’t improve them any when he suggested that Boss and Ma’am were to blame for all the mages that died in the wars he put skin in to fix. And those crucial first impressions, like the kind that told him that Evelyn Trevelyan was a _bas_ he knew he was gonna like, really tanked in the shitter when he didn’t give them a real name.

“Blondie will do,” He croaked to himself trying to laugh, like a dry throat just starting to work again--one unfamiliar with the sound. “Maker knows I’ve been conditioned to answer to it.”

Boss didn’t give him her name either; “Call me B,” earning a strangled laugh from Bull.

“What’s so funny Bull?” She asked him, settling back down into the itchy straw pallets they rested on. _Blondie_ had gone to fetch clean bandages and the farmer had gone to give the two some privacy to rest.

“This whole thing is doomed from the start, Boss. You know you’re a half-step from fucked if the guy literally named ‘liar’ is the only one in the room giving out truth.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“Fuck no, and you shouldn’t either.”

“I don’t, not wholly, I didn’t give him my name. He apparently doesn’t have very warm feelings about me or the Inquisition.”

“It ain’t that I’m worried about Boss, him finding out your secret. I’m more concerned about us finding out his.”

He had to send a report about Evelyn once, one he had to smuggle past Leliana’s scrutiny which amounted to two of the tensest days of his life. Ones he’d rather not relive, constantly looking over his shoulder, the real cloak and dagger shit where Leliana might appear from a cloak and stab him with the dagger. He loved redheads but after that, they got knocked down a peg or two on his ladder before the whole damn scaffolding got blown over by a certain Tevinter mage.

Thinking about it now, nothing he wrote was bad per se, just the truth. Evelyn Trevelyan was a bright, fearsome, insecure, brave, slightly neurotic, wholly good, but dangerously naive person. But in his estimation, people get real touchy whenever presented with unfiltered truth. That tactic worked a little better for him now that the people he surrounded himself with were considered his family instead of his adversaries. Family swallowed unsweetened, unfiltered truth better than most. But still it probably wouldn’t fly for him to outright say: ‘Boss, you trusting this Blondie is like to get us killed. And by Us I mean Me, because if only one of us gets to go home, I’m gonna make damn sure it's you.’

That was the other thing about Evelyn Trevelyan--the thing he held back from that report because if he put it in, the Hassraths would have pulled him out immediately:

She inspired that kind of loyalty, that kind of love.

So he kept his only eye trained on the mage, watching him, listening to him for tells that’d reveal whatever he was hiding. Everybody had them, no matter how deep or thoroughly buried, everybody’s got their something that gives them away.

And for this Blondie guy? It was his magic. He glowed blue in the midst of their previous argument, his voice changed a bit, like he was speaking from inside the hollow of a bell. His whole body was taken over in those little moments of righteous fury. _Possessed_ one could say.

Shit.

Fuck.

Damn.

Shit!

“Fuck!” He cursed aloud, groaning as he threw off his covers on their third day awake (now their eighth day since the beat down.)

“What’s wrong Bull?”

They were still in the barn, still well cared for by Blondie and the Farmer (“I go by the name Manassus, and stay long as you need. I got plenty food for all of ya’, even you!” He joked pointing at the Bull’s stomach.) Blondie insisted two week’s rest before they’d be fit to travel again but Evelyn managed to convince him to shorten it to one.

“Having someone good with the healing magic is nice, but it’d be better if we didn’t rely on it. There may be a time when he ain’t here and we gotta look out for ourselves. Which means _you_ Boss.”

He extended a hand to pull her to her feet. Evelyn looked at her book, then his hand, then her book again before sighing, marking her place, and closing it up. She got to her feet with some difficulty, fresh scars stretching in her flesh before he knocked her back to the ground with a shoulder in her chest.

“You gotta learn to take a hit.”

“What the utter fuck!” She glared at him from the floor of the barn, bits of hay stuck in her vines. He’d laugh if he wasn’t deadly serious about his new mission.

“You can’t rely on being at range all the time Boss, group dynamics such as they are now don’t allow for it. And you’re shit with your daggers.”

Evelyn scrunched her face, a blush born out of indignance rather than embarrassment, Bull’s unfettered truth acting up again.

But since she was family, “Granted.” She accepted his truth. Evelyn filtered her answer through her teeth, pissed about being knocked on her ass and insulted.

“Look, when there was 4 of us, I took the hits and Ma’am kept me going leaving you and ka- _Dorian_ free to cry havoc with spells and arrows. You didn’t worry about getting in the shit because I was already there. Me and Ma’am had it handled. And do you remember the first time we went out without Ma’am? Remember what happened?”

“We got our asses charred by a clutch of dragons.”

“Exactly.” Bull barreled past the memory before he got mired in it, ignoring the urge to reach for the halved dragon’s tooth around his neck. He well remembered the feeling, the swelling, the tightness that made it feel like his ribs were about to crack because he was so filled up with love when Dorian took the other half of the tooth. He remembered too that tightness whistling out of him when Dorian kneed him in the balls for scaring him so bad. If he dwelled too long, that tightness might return, but instead of love it’ll be sorrow that fills him up, and his ribs might actually crack at that.

“Now I’m not saying this Blondie guy don’t know his shit. But if this is gonna work, I might need you to be up in the shit with me. And for that to work, for us to not get fucking _bodied_ every time we gotta fight, I need _you_ , Boss, to diversify your murder portfolio.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

**

Blondie returned for the end-of-day check-in, horrified. “Andraste’s knickerweasles! What happened?”

Other Boss might kill him for this, and he’d be right to. Bull certainly made the mental note to let Cullen get a few good licks in whenever he found out.

“B’s gonna learn how to block with a shield one day, just wasn’t today.”

From neck to hip he splattered her with bruises, some so close together they morphed into one big, deep-purple blotch of pain. She winced and hissed whenever Blondie got too close with his magic, surly about the ass kicking and because she was really shitty with sword and shield.

“Cheer up B, your Tama taught you bow and arrow, not swordplay. You can’t expect to pick it up that easily.”

Evelyn huffed and moved to cross her arms but yelped when the motion aggravated a bruised rib.

“Did you have to be so rough with her though?” Blondie fixed what he could and gave her an elfroot potion for the rest.

“Yes,” they answered in unison. Her answer coming from pride, and his from practicality.

**

They parted ways with Manassus who graciously filled their packs with food and supplies. Blondie cleaned up a bit, trimming the wild bush about his face but kept his hair long, tied in place with a much cleaner red ribbon. Evelyn gave him his choice of riding companions, he took one look at Hissy Face and chose correctly, patting Jackson nervously on the flank.

“You’ll have to forgive me. I haven’t been out in so long. And I’ve _never_ ridden…” Bull listened to Blondie’s voice as it died away, sounding like he was on the verge of recalling something. But to his better trained ears, he was more trying to decide what to reveal. “Okay, I take that back, I’ve ridden a few times. But that was many years ago.”

“And you’ve been on the run since?”

Another pause. “I heard about Kirkwall, then the war. I kept to myself, stayed hidden until I found decent shelter in the mountains. The people in the village were kind, so in exchange for my services they kept me fed and out of Templar hands. The world doesn’t look different. But I suppose it wouldn’t.”

Boss laughed. “You missed the part where the sky--”

Her hand, the left one, still wrapped tight in bandages flew to her neck and squeezed hard.

“B? Talk to me B.”

She didn’t, Boss pulled hard on Jackson’s reins and kicked him into a gallop, heading north.


	10. Blondie: Going North

He needed to get this out of the way first:

Bea was a very attractive woman.

Not as attractive as Hawke because the Maker broke the mold with her, but he felt given time, if opportunity presented--Sweet Maker _yes_.!

And Maker it had been some _time_.

He still dreamt of her, of Hawke, though they were less dreams and more memories of what he lost.

She was everything. Everything.

Years had gone by and that wound still stung, a constant pain upon his heart, a chronic illness for which there might never be a cure.

He was a spirit healer, but the Circle never taught you how to heal your own.

He spat bitterly, never so foul a word upon this earth than that, _Circle._

Except maybe _templar._

Or _Chantry._

The mage grunted softly in the saddle as though he’d taken a wound to the side. If he suspected his heartbreak over losing Hawke would take time to heal, then his guilt over the Chantry, that would _never_ go away. That one wasn’t a scar so much as an open festering wound, one that bled fresh every morning when he woke from his nightmares.

_She held the knife over his heart, pressed the blade just hard enough to prick, draw blood._

_Her eyes were dark, clouded by rage and hurt. She screamed at him, cried, cursed him._

_“This will never be enough for the innocent lives you took, no matter your intention.”_

_“Mariána…please.” He begged her, pulling his chest into the blade. “End this.”_

“You alright back there Blondie?”

He started, shaking loose from the waking nightmare of his past. “I’m fine,” his voice grated, rough and uncouth, sounding ruder than he meant to but he offered no apology.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“You mind easing up then, you holdin’ kinda tight. Are we going too fast for you?”

Blondie’s arms encircled Bea’s waist in a grip on the razor’s edge of inappropriate. He let go by degrees, still too unsure in the saddle to release her completely. Or at least that was the lie he told himself to smother the niggling feeling of comfort he got from the physical contact, of having this pretty woman so close.

Because Maker, it had been some _time._

“Hey Boss.”

The Iron Bull made him wary, convinced him that his one eye saw better than a full pair. He needed to be careful around him, moreso than the usual vigilance required around qunari. Bea he’d give the benefit of the doubt before frying her to save his skin if he needed to, The Iron Bull--not so much.

“If Jacky’s getting tired, Blondie can come ride double with me.”

“It’s alright Bull, we’re okay over here.”

“You sure Boss? You been quiet since we changed direction.”

“I’m fine Bull, really.”

They made one final exchange, spoken with a pair of glances and ended with a firm shake of her head.

“Blondie, if you’re tired of me you can go hang with Bull if you want. I won’t be offended. I know I’m not very pleasant riding company.”

“Oh you’re more than pleasant enough.” He mumbled. As a flirt it sounded pathetic, he was out of practice for sure, but it also sounded nice enough to be just polite conversation. Rather than hear it, he felt her chuckle with his arms still around her waist.

“Flatterer.” She answered back.

“Only if it’s working.” That was a little better, her laugh carried beyond her body this time. Noticeably though, she did not answer. Flirting from horseback had him at a disadvantage, unable to read her face or her body language beyond what he could feel. Hawke would have returned the gesture by now, citing something vaguely (well not _vaguely,_ nothing about that woman could ever be done vaguely) inappropriate--hopefully in front of her brother to get the poor whelp’s ears to turn red.

He returned her chuckle, remembering nights at the Hanged Man, of games of Diamondback and Wicked Grace with weird dwarven rules that made no sense, and even weirder Tevinter rules that always ended with him losing more coin than he came in with.

Fenris’s perpetually dour face made him excellent at bluffing and a master at concealing a tell. Blondie’s good humor dissolved with his laugh, replaced with a sudden bitterness he was not ashamed to name.

Jealousy.

But as quickly as that gorge rose he swallowed it. No matter his feelings about the elf, Hawke made her choice, and Blondie made his own. He lost her long before that Chantry exploded anyway.

Bea whispered something lyrical, elven, and the hart under them seemed to snort in approval before stopping.

“We’ll rest the night here.”

“Aye.” The qunari and his beast stopped as well, a little too close to the hart who shied away with an annoyed whine.

“Jackson, you really just gonna have to get used to her you know?”

He stared, gawking openly as she eased from the saddle, sliding off her mount with a grace he’d only seen on dancefloors. She offered her hand to him, strength in her grip as she helped him down like he was the prince and this was a fairytale.

Now he could see her face, the muted smile on dry windblown lips that still looked too appealing to not kiss. Dark circles of exhaustion shadowed the shine of her eyes but could not remove their inherent spark. She wore her hair down for his sake, thick tendrils of hair that swished and swayed and hissed with her every movement. On their first day on the road her spider-legged bun kept bumping him in the face, annoying but for the sweet smell-- like the little white flowers that grew in Circle Tower’s garden.

He hoped he wasn’t blushing when he offered his quiet thanks.

**

_“Mariána…please.” He begged her, pulling his chest into the blade. “End this.”_

_“No,” she shook her head. “You won’t get out of hearing me. Hearing what you need to hear. Symbols are more than symbols, and sometimes they’re less. That symbol you destroyed to make your statement was also a building, a church, where the devout go to pray. There were men, women, children there who loved their Maker the same way you love your patients and your cats and mages…the same way you love…”_

_“You.”_

**

The fire had burned to embers this late in the night but she didn’t seem bothered with tending it.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Bea stiffened and jumped, squeezing her fists ready to throw a punch before stuffing them quickly under her arms.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to wake you, didn’t know I was broodin’ so loud.”

“It was more his snoring than anything else.” He lied, tossing his head the qunari’s way. Bull lay sprawled out on the grass, limbs strewn in all directions like the points of a compass rose.

“At least somebody’s getting rest.”

“Can you not sleep? I think I know a spell that might help.”

“No thanks, they never really worked for me.”

Never worked for Hawke either.

**

_It took two of them, Aveline and Varric, to pull the Arishok’s blade from her gut. He tried to soothe her, tried to get her stop moving and squirming, telling that stubborn ass she was losing more blood wriggling around now than she did in the fight. But she kept reaching for something, kept trying to talk to someone._

_“Mari, be still. I’m here, darling, you’re going to be alright.” His spell for sleep only made her fight him harder, she gurgled on her words and the blood in her throat._

_“Hawke.” The elf stood uselessly behind him, hopefully mired in guilt. It was his fault she had to duel that grey bastard in the first place. And while Aveline ran to get Carver and Varric beat the crowd back with threats and crossbow bolts, Fenris knelt and took her reaching hand, saying nothing more than the broken utterance of her name. “Hawke.”_

_At the time, he was so frantic, pumping her with magic to keep her heart beating as it stuttered under his hands, he didn’t realize that she calmed when the elf called her name. He just wanted to keep her alive._

_“Stay with me Hawke. Don’t leave me, love. Mari don’t go!”_

_“I love you.” She said, making him cry, thinking those would be her last words._

_He didn’t realize until much later, that time, they weren’t for him._

**

Something soft landed in his lap, leatherbound and jiggling.

“Well if we’re both going to be sad sacks of sleeplessness might as well pass the time right?”

He uncorked the skin and sniffed; wine.

“Is it wise to drink when you have to rise so early? The Bull is relentless in your training. He’s like to beat you harder if you have a hangover.”

Every morning for an hour, sometimes more before they were due to be on the road, Iron Bull trained Bea on her swordplay--if train meant kick the crap out of her.

“I’m getting better. Besides he ain’t my damn daddy. If I wanna drink at Maker fucked hour of the late night or early morning, I’m gonna.” He took a draw, fought the scrunch on his face put there by the wine’s closer resemblance to vinegar and tossed Bea the skin. “Though, were he, I suspect my life would look a lot different.”

She put her lips on the spout reminding him of giggles in the dark and sneaking sacramental wine from Sister Althea. Karl was bold like that.

Anders laughed, catching the skin when she threw it back, “Here here.”

“Do you have family Blondie? You could go back to them now with things being different.”

“No. There is no one.”

“You mean you sprang fully formed from bird feathers and cat hair?”

“How do you know about the cats? I haven’t been near one in weeks!”

Bea fiddled with her hair, raking hands he knew to be equal parts strong and tender down her vines, pulling loose a piece of hair, straight and limp, unlike the curly-cue hair that sometimes shook free of the ends of her locs.

“I’ve been picking orange hairs out of my own for a week now.”

They shared a laugh that they stifled quickly when The Iron Bull grunted and rolled over, mumbling half-dreaming curses; ‘Other Boss, put her to sleep already, damn’.

He found her laugh pretty and for once, forgot to compare it to Hawke’s. He meant to compliment that laugh, feeling bold himself, the wine coupling with his burgeoning affection.

But her smile died quicker than his. She bid him a quiet goodnight and turned away from him before he got the chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We skipped a weak for reasons. But we’re back now. And the chapters are getting longer so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> Blondie doesn’t know that B is just the letter not a name. So the ‘Bea’ is deliberate. Writing Anders is hard because I know how I feel about him but I’m trying to write him as objectively as possible how I think he would feel after everything that’s happened to him and trying to figure out this new path he’s on right now with Evelyn and Bull.
> 
> I am Anders critical. I’m telling you that now. And my mage!Hawke was not okay with what he did in Kirkwall. (There will be more development on that particular story as time goes on. (͡ ° ͜ʖ ͡ °) ) But I hope that it doesn’t seem like I’m unecessarily abusing him because I’m not. He’s nuanced for sure, lets see how well I can capture it. And if you’ve got feelings about how I’m doing him, let me know.


	11. Sera: The Silver in the Drawer

Gotta look for the sliver in the cupboard.

No. That wadn’t right.

Gotta look for the silver in the sheets!

Nope. Still sounded wrong. Like Dagna left a wrench behind in the bed ‘cause whatever she was toolin’ with couldn’t wait till morning.

Gotta look…

_Gotta look…_

The drawer!

Gotta look for the silver in the drawer!

And the silver in the drawer of having B’s Da around was that he finally turned the food back on! She hadn’t eaten so good since she stuffed her face with pork pies and apple tenderloins back at Ostwick. Them Marchers could throw a party!

Sera let her bow drop, hands and heart heavy with the memory of the last time they were all together.

Well sorta.

She never saw eye-to-eye with Solas, with Vivienne neither, but they still counted as a part of the ‘they’ and so both were duly missed.

“Toss it.” Before the memory became to heavy to carry, she picked her bow right back up and aimed, pointing her arrow at the bright red ‘x’ she marked with stolen lipstick between the strawman’s peepers-- if he had any.

“I’m the best shot in the keep now!” She reminded herself. “See! The silver in the drawer!”

“It’s ‘lining’ Sera.”

“Yaa!”

Sera screamed losing her grip on the arrow. Her shot arced over the battlements and into open mountain air never to been seen again. She imagined the scarecrow breathing a sigh of relief.

If he had any lungs.

So if an arrow falls in the…

And nobody’s there to…

Does it still hit someone in the noggin?

Commander Cullen appeared behind her looking too small for his fancy schmancy white armor, like they made it two sizes too big for him or they made it the right size but he just shrunk.

Yeah, she reasoned, he shrunk. Heart all shrunk up with everything too big for him. His armor, Skyhold, his new job.

“Tits! Can’t sneak up on people like that. And whadaya mean it’s ‘lining’?”

“I mean, the phrase, it goes…” He shook his head, cutting off his correction before resuming in a voice too small for his mouth and her ears. “My apologies Sera. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Sera made a noise, a cross between a snort and a growl. “You can’t do that either!”

“Do what exactly?”

Commander Lionpants, in her estimation, was good for two things.

Pranking. (That desk bit was _brilliant_. “It’s plenty sturdy,” B said. The thought still made her giggle when it got too quiet at night.)

And the second thing;

Making B happy.

She guessed he was good at other things too. Like being serious and growly-like. Callin’ him Lionpants was deliberate, a reminder in case she needed anything roared at--like that time when someone called her crazy. She smiled, remembering the red in his face when he screamed at that recruit. He was good for that kinda stuff.

But he wasn’t good for this, all this _contrition_. Not him. Like something’s sucked the gunk outta him like meat from a crabclaw. The outer parts were still there but the insides were just…

Empty.

“Just apologize like that. You don’t apologize to me. You call me annoying and kick me outta your office for snoopin’. You don’t apologize.”

“Sera, we’re not in my office.”

“I know that!” She picked an arrow out of the quiver at her feet, red feathers in the fletching. The boyer musta not heard the news if he’s still making arrows for her. But Sera needed something to practice with and it’d be awhile before B’s Da got the rest of supply shipments comin’ in. Sera nocked, drew, and loosed one of them into her target. It struck home with a dry thunk, blade sinking into the straw. “You’re in _mine_. My office. What are ya’ doing here anyway?”

Cullen didn’t answer her immediately, eyes still fixed on the quiver and the arrows and their red feathers. “I was looking for a quiet place.”

“And you came down here?” He wasn’t looking at her and it was annoying, she kicked the quiver behind her, hiding them, forcing his gaze up and out of the grass and onto her face. She hated it when people didn’t look her in the eye. She was worth it, damnit! Like anybody else here.

“Not intentionally. But it seems like wherever else I go…”

He stopped talking, watching as she chose another arrow, flitting through the pile on the ground. They were all the same, sturdy and well made, but some were better than others for no other reason that her own discretion. “I meant what I said.” She choose one, had more grey in the feathers than red--a courtesy he probably wouldn’t notice.

“About?”

“The silver bein’ in the drawer.”

She did it again, said one of those things people just smile and nod at pretending like they understood what she meant. She knew what she meant damnit. It made sense. And it would continue to make sense even if the other’s didn’t think so. Fancy britches did it all the time, the smiling and the nodding and the pretending. But now fancy britches didn’t neither smile nor nod no more.

But plenty of pretending.

The Commander, he didn’t smile or nod--or pat her head with polite words sayin’ ‘Oh Sera’ you goose.’

Instead, he asked. “What do you mean?”

“You got a ghost followin’ ya. Everywhere you go. Your room too empty. You all but locked up B’s tower. You can’t go over to the east wing on account of her Ma and Da and brother.”

The Commander still wouldn’t smile, but this time he nodded.

“Way I see it, everyplace dark. Even your office.”

She’s gone, tipped off some deep end now, her words just coming like a broken spigot on an ale cask. She wasn’t sure she was supposed to be saying so much--Dagna made her swear-- but he kept listening so she kept talking. Nobody ‘cept Dagna had done either with her so much since they all came back.

“It’s chock full of the stuff that reminds you of her. Her letters, them pretty rocks I watched her fish outta a bog because she thought they’d be something you might like. But there’s silver locked in your drawer, like a promise waitin’ on a better tomorrow. Waitin’ for the bad stuff to be done. Waitin’ for her to come home and for you to finally show her.”

His eyes popped wide, a dead fish with a gaping mouth to match. “Sera...how?”

Sera’s laugh, had it magic, would have cracked the stone--heard clear across the Frostbacks. He wasn’t much for smiling these days but that, that teased one out of him--more a grimace than a grin but it was something. “Whaja mean how? I’m besties with the dwarf who helped you make ‘em you daft duck!”

She made him sit on a haybale, or else a stiff breeze woulda knocked him over. The dry grass poked her in places she’d rather not be poked but it was alright for now.

“Does anyone else...Maker I’m a fool. I should have… I had the rings in my hand, Sera. I had the speech in my head. Then something happened. That was the day Madame de Fer left. And she told me that day it wasn’t over, that there were still enemies everywhere, so I waited, convincing myself that the time wasn’t right. Convinced that I had all the time I needed with Corypheus gone. I had so many opportunities, but I still waited until... ”

“Well, Vivvy was right. B got all blood magicked and then the thing with the poor folks happened and then Thom-y. Then we all had to go to Ostwick and, tits, what a shite show that was.”

“Yes. One of the biggest things that keeps me awake is where would we be right now had I not been such a coward?”

Sera swallowed down a gasp, having the good sense to keep her shock quiet. The Commander was definitely no good for cowardice. Just not him.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. She still woulda gone. Her Da still woulda sold his grandbaby up the river to change him. And the war still woulda happened. Them new templars still woulda tried to destroy that Circle. ‘Cept if we weren’t there having a wedding on account of you two already bein’ hitched, maybe then they woulda succeeded. Maybe we weren’t there to stop them in them thoughts that keep you up. But then you’d have brand new thoughts wouldntcha? A whole Circle burned up, all them mages and their templar friends--gone. And you wonderin’ what you coulda done to stop it all.”

She liked to talk about anything, breeches and bees and arrows. Stickin’ the bad guys and girls with the pointy ends. She could talk for days about that. But she kept quiet about that night at Ostwick Circle. Mage bodies and templar bodies all tangled up, armor and cloth, one protecting the other until they all died.

And they _all_ would have died had the Inquisition not been there.

“You’re right.”

He said it in a way that made her chest flutter funny. Not in that way Vivvy or Solas or Fancy Britches usually say it--where they don’t even believe the words comin’ out of their mouths--like it was impossible for _her_ to _ever_ be right about something.

But he said it like he was learning something from her--and grateful for the lesson to boot.

“Thank you Sera.”

“For what? I didn’t do anything!”

“You did. And that’s enough. But I’ll warn,” His voice dropped off a cliff, into the deep places where you need a torch to get through. “You aren’t to tell a soul about those rings.”

Growly! Yes! Finally!

She laughed rocking back off the haybale into the dirt. “Dagna already made me swear not to tell. Guess it's a double swear now.”

“I’m having a hard time believing you kept it a secret this long.”

“A swear’s a swear.” She rocked forward and onto her feet, pulling him to stand with her. “And now, move your arse.”

“Sorry?” He stood with her, letting himself be led to the line she drew in the dirt a handful of paces away from the strawman with the no breeches and the no peepers.

“Again with the sorrys. You don’t spoil my shot and get ta’ walk away. So stand straight, Commander! Here.”

She shoved her bow into his hands, a blonde wood, the rings a darker brown, joined in the middle by a wicked iron handgrip lined with spikes.

He held it funny, like he half-knew what he was doing but still didn’t.

“You want me to…”

“Shoot silly.”

“I don’t think I… I really should...” The Commander tried to push the bow back into Sera’s hands, stepping away from the line and her.

She was doing good, right up until this very second she was doing so good. But clouds passed over her heart too quick to blow them away with her usual bluster.

“Everybody keeps leavin’. All my friends. I miss them. Even the elfy one. And now Bull’s gone too. Who am I gonna mayhem with? I thought he’d be here forever. And you! There you go. Leavin’ me like the rest.”

Stupid Sera, Silly Sera, Sour Sera, ruining the moment with crying.

“B used to say ‘you’re the best shot in the keep Sera.’ And I knew she was having me on, that girlie can shoot the twinkle outta your Da’s eye. And I thought that...I thought that now that I _am_ the best shot, I might make myself feel a little better what with everyone being so bloody _sorry_ all the time but… What’s the point of being the best when you got nobody to compare to?”

He looked at the bow, thumbing the belly before switching his hands on the grip then switching them back. It was still wrong, but he can’t really tell.

“Am I doing this right? I feel like this doesn’t feel right.”

“That’s ‘cuz it ain’t.”

She moved his hands, placing his left on the grip until the haft fit naturally in the gap between his thumb and palm. He reached for an arrow, pausing to swipe a thumb up and down the red fletching. “Think Harrit will make more?”

“If you ask him, sure.”

He extended his left arm out, bow at right angles to the ground. He fumbled the arrow more than once trying to nock it. Sera guided him step-by-step the same way Evelyn had to that very first time.

“Higher, no higher...all the way back, by your face. Maker’s arse you really are bad at this.”

“This is getting difficult to hold.”

“If you can swing a big, heavy arsed sword you can pull the draw on a 30 pounder. Now let go.”

His arrows flew in every direction but straight, but he stayed until they didn’t, and promised to return tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just with Anders before, Sera’s new. Sera’s difficult. And if you think I can improve her voice, lemmie know.
> 
> Also these chapters are getting longer and longer. Means I’m hitting my stride?? No idea. Thanks for being patient.
> 
> thanks for the comments too


	12. Thom: Sympathy for the Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Chapter Title: Don't Call it a Comeback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so we’ve made no bones about the fact that I was on hiatus, possibly for good, from this fandom because REASONS that you should well understand if you’ve talked to me or followed my tumblr for any reasonable amount of time. 
> 
> And by and large, that’s still the case.
> 
> But I won’t say I’m done for good and forever because I love the stories I’ve written and the characters I’ve written and I love B and Cullen so much that I feel like I owe it to THEM and no one else to try and finish their story. 
> 
> Try being the operative word here.
> 
> So this is us (me Royal We remember?) trying to do just that.
> 
> Also if you know me you know that I have a super secret alternate fandom side thing that I’ve been working on and posting with regularity but you’ll have to DM me for that info 
> 
> Don’t expect updates with any regularity. Hell you might not get one after this. And again you may. 
> 
> Cheers lovelies.

The walnut cracked easy in his hands, yielding to the chisel that, on another day, would have bent before the wood did.

 

Damn, even the wood pitied him now.

 

And by the Maker’s whiskers was he  _ tired _ of pity. Even Josephine’s sweet brand of it, the kind that held onto the smiles for him he knew were difficult if not impossible to keep on her face. Every moment with him, she seemed ready to fly into tears at a moment’s provocation, muttering apologies as she dabbed her eyes with his kerchief as she fled him, taking the cloth with her. She’s squirlling bits of him away, he thought, little keepsakes to keep close preparing for the time when she’ll be honor and duty bound to keep a husband closer.

 

A husband who wouldn’t notice the the sum of her affections rested in tiny carven griffons and scraps of silk embroidered with ‘TR’.

 

Josie didn’t talk about him, her betrothed. Understandably she didn’t want to inflict him with anymore undue heartache but it was worse  _ not _ knowing the kind of man she was going marry. He’d rather know everything about him, all of his life from birth ‘till now, and this was his Josie, he knew she knew those details down to the month.

 

Rainier needed to know for his own sanity so he could walk away assured that she was well cared for if not well loved. To know nothing of this man meant that she could very well walk into a cage where a cruel man held the key. 

 

Isn’t that what Lady Trevelyan did?

 

His chisel carved into the wood too deeply, chipping off a nubbin of wood grounding his griffon before the wing had the chance to form. While this ruined his artistic vision, it didn’t scrap the project itself. There were elven children throughout the keep with malformed and misshapen animals in their pockets, purchased with smiles and maybe a game or two of Bear in the Bower--in which he always played the bear.

 

A handful of them arrived, standing in the entryway of his barn looking pensive and fidgety.

 

“Seroso.” He always chuckled at their name for him, Krem--in his idle time--set up a school for the freedmen to learn the trade tongue. They could say ‘Thom Rainier’ now, maybe without the flourish and accent Orlesian demanded, but their tongues were practiced enough. But the free elves, the children specifically, still preferred to call him by their Tevinter nickname. Something Dorian said approximates to “Mr. Bear.”

 

“Yes?” He puffed his chest and growled, putting on a show. The name should fit the face, especially after so many years of wearing one that didn’t. Gordon Blackwall never fit him, despite his foolish attempts to force it. Adopting speech and clothing and a history that never did and never would belong to him. Thom Rainier fit a little better, especially when it was Josephine calling his name but even then, after so many years running and hiding, even that name didn’t fit right. Like clothes you outgrew.

 

But Mr. Bear seemed well suited to his round, fleshy frame, hairy face, and gruff demeanor. They didn’t need to know his bear was more teddy than terror though.

 

The children didn’t giggle when he grunted, urging them to get on with their request. They stood there, shifting nervously.

 

Rainier put away his tools and bent down to address the smallest child, a girl no older than 7. “What’s wrong bonbon?” They learned the pet names quickly. Words like cookie, please, and candy always came first in the lexicon of any child. The name coaxed a smile from her, she giggled, and instantly they all relaxed.

 

“Lady fell down. She won’t wake.”

 

“Where?”

 

The girl, Ireesa, looked away from him again, tears welling in her impossibly blue eyes. What have they seen? He always wondered. What  _ would _ they have seen had Lady Trevelyan not brought them here?

 

“I ‘m sorry.”

 

“Whatever for?”

 

“Please no mad.”

 

“Never.” He affirmed quickly.

 

He extended his hand to the child, the pads of it rough and calloused very much like a bear’s paw. She took it, and led him away. 

 

Immediately he knew why she swore him against anger, the builders were renovating this crumbling part of the keep that claimed one worker and one child already. It was off limits to anyone without a trowel but in a keep full of children, most of them bored, any place deemed off limits became the opposite.

 

He growled and she squeezed his hand tighter.

 

“Swore.”

 

“I did. But you know better.”

 

She nodded, gulping down a little sigh. He had to bend to get around the fallen planks of wood and lift Ireesa to traverse the collapsed walls. This renovation had been postponed, the funds diverted to other necessities. With the Inquisition’s new boon those projects resumed, this tower should have been rebuilt long ago but they needed food more than they needed space. 

 

They heard cursing from within, a woman’s voice spewing Marcher obscenities. And for a moment, Rainier thought the little girl had found Evelyn--the curses too close to her own flavor of speech to be anything but.

 

Yet instead they found her mother, collapsed in a drunken heap.

 

“Lady…” Lady Trevelyan didn’t fit this face even though it should.  _ His _ Lady Trevelyan cursed like this, could even drink like this if the celebrations merited it or Cabot’s pour was particularly heavy that night. But _ his _ Lady Trevelyan never made herself so sloppy or put her life or the lives of children in danger like this.

 

“Oh…” The bear and the elven child fair were in her vision, right in front of her face for a full minute, but only now did she seem to notice. She smoothed the folds of her dress down over her scraped knees and legs, injuries no doubt suffered when she fell amidst the pile of stones she laid upon. “Apologiesss. I...I...I was insspecting the tower and f-e-ll.”

 

Her voice pulled too long on her vowels, stretched anything with an ‘s’ in it. This woman was obliterated, he’d seen soldiers after war winning victories more sober than this.

 

“Do...not….trouble yourssself. Jussst...my son...Alphonse. Call Alphonse. He will help me.”

 

A brick jarred loose from the rotting mortar above, Ireesa shrieked and Rainier curled himself around the girl in case that was the first drop in a flood of falling stone. If he could save only one, he’d choose the girl and Lady Susanna didn’t look like she minded that at all.

 

“Alphonsse. Dearesst. Manmi has fallen. Can...can you…?”

 

“Lady Susanna please, shout any louder and you could bring the tower down.” He stepped forward to reach for her but Ireesa, scared witless, held tighter to him.

 

“Please no go.”

 

He couldn’t make her leave on her own, not without him. And he couldn’t hold onto her  _ and _ fetch Lady Susanna out of her nest of rubble.

 

Rainier crouched down pointing to his back. “Up. Get on.”

 

His heart broke for how light she was, seven year olds can’t... _ shouldn’t _ be this easy to bear. There was food now in the keep, but the damage would be long in reversing. Ireesa was bone and naught all else.

 

But she had a grip though, around his neck, it almost choked him. “Ease up mon canard,” he strangled.

 

She didn’t. Scared. Witless.

 

Working with two handicaps, at least his hands were free to grab Lady Susanna. The woman didn’t object, didn’t seem to notice how he was roughly pulling her toward him, dragging her across the stones because that was far easier than bending and picking her up. He didn’t have the room for it, space too cramped with the collapsed roof and walls and fallen beams. He’s going to have a conversation with Inquisitor Rutherford, see about putting permanent guards in this part of the keep. He may volunteer himself, at least it’d give him something better to do with his nights.

 

“Oh...Serah, don’t trouble yoursellf. I’mfine. Really. My son is coming.”

 

Too much deathroot wine put her every response on a delay. It was only after she was half-way in his arms that she began to struggle against him. “Leave me! He is coming. Alphonse is coming.”

 

Alphonse? The name was familiar, he’d heard Evelyn speak it before but only in passing. 

 

“Alphonse had a toy like this,” she held up the carven bird, his latest work. “A duck on a string he pulled behind him and it’s wings would flap. Do the wings flap?”

 

“No Lady Trevelyan.” She’d come to check on him a week after pulling him out of the Hinterland forest. Haven didn’t agree with him, his offers for help with the day-to-day particulars were always met with polite yet cold refusal. So he dug his tools out of the bottom of his rucksack and gave himself his own work.

 

“Please Blackwall, Call me B and I’ll pay you good money if you can make the wings flap.”

 

“Serah! Stop!” Susanna fought earnestly now, shoving him back, upsetting his balance. He almost crashed into a wall but stopped before Iressa could be crushed.

 

“No. Lady Susanna Stop!”

 

“Unhand me or my son will--!”

 

“Madam! Your son is dead!”

 

Susannah kept struggling, like she hadn’t heard. Her kicking knocked loose pebbles and mortar from the walls. Ireesa whimpered and held tighter, bone or not, a 30 pound weight about the neck still choked.

 

The delay between stimulus and response seemed to be about 10 seconds. Her world filtered through wine, some things made it through, some didn’t.

 

“Madam! Your son is dead!” 

 

That made it.

 

Susanna went limp, she stopped struggling, became a full body of dead weight in his grasp. Which was just about as bad as when she was actively fighting him. Her limbs slipped through his grasp, it became much harder to get a good grip on her. He seized her by the wrist and pulled, dragging her across stone and mortar, under fallen beams and across collapsed walls. He pulled at her like a too heavy sack of potatoes--or more acutely--grief.

 

Her grief had a weight and it crushed the life out of her. Alphonse was dead. 

 

“Ta yaro,”  _ My son _ . She cried. Gareth hated anything that wasn’t trade or the classic languages like Orlesian and Tevene. But when she cried in private it was always in Rivani. Alphonse was dead, she knew this, but she forgot sometimes. The wine made her forget and wasn’t that its purpose--to make one forget the pain? It's just that her wine took away the memory of that pain and just about every other memory with it.

 

Three children, back-to-back-to-back. Maxwell, Laia, Alphonse. All dead.

 

The wine made her forget and this man made her remember, killing them over again. Guilt heavy enough to carry, grief heavy enough to crush, she didn’t feel her skin tear on the rocks as Rainier dragged her to safety.

 

**

 

Clear of the danger, Rainier sent Ireesa back to her father. Before she left he bent to her, holding out his pinky finger longer and thicker than her pointer and middle combined.

 

“Where I come from, this is how we promise, a sacred oath.”

 

Ireesa nodded, looking ready to cry again. He locked her pinky with his and shook their hands up and down. 

 

“Never again. Do you swear.”

 

“Yes.”

 

**

 

Inquisitor Rutherford wasn’t alone when he came to see him two days later. Rainier understood the Inquisitor’s time was valuable, rare even, as Lady B’s always was. He expected to make a passing request, slip him a note asking him to spare guards for the crumbling tower. He may yet have his chance to, but only after the woman standing before him makes her own request.

 

Inquisitor Rutherford, Commander Rutherford, Rainier was still unsure if the man has forgiven him for his role in all this. Sparing his life was one of the tumbling stones that turned into the avalanche of problems that necessitated the lady taking her father’s deal. 

 

And.

 

Word from Varric was the Inquisitor already has a known problem with Commanders who lead their soldiers astray. Knight Commanders specifically. 

 

“My daughter…” The woman struggled to keep steady on her feet and the wake of wine she carried with her lingered all the way back to the door. “Do you remember when...when we ‘er here last?”

 

“Madam.” He gripped his quill with a fist so tight his fingers would break first. “Sir Rainier will escort you back to your chambers. I haven’t the time or the inclination to reminisce with you.”

 

Rainier bristled at the passive command, assured that the answer to his question about forgiveness was a firm ‘no’. He knew better than to let others still beat on him for his transgressions, Josephine taught him that one.

 

“She did not save you from the wrath of the whole of Orlais for you to let yourself be beaten in a common bar brawl. She wanted better for you. So you must also want better for yourself.”

 

Still, when the man looked up at him in the open doorway, there was no malice in his eyes but relief.

 

_Save me._ They begged.

 

Rainier dropped his head but shuffled forward, (he needed to be better about that. He dragged his feet when he should walk with purpose.)

 

“Come with me Lady Susannah. I will take you back.” He was gentle with the arm he wrapped around her shoulder, but the lady dropped to the ground as though struck.

 

“No. No! Hear me, Inquisitor. Please. My daughter told me, when we were here last, that there is a shrine to my son up the mountain. Do you know where it is? Can you take me there? Please.”

 

These words were clear, un-slurred. Everything else about the Lady Susannah was a wine soaked mess except for those words. 

 

“Can you take me?” She repeated. “Please.”

 

“Come Lady.” Rainier bent to peel her off the floor but a hand from the Inquisitor stopped him. He walked from around his desk and gently lifted the woman back to her feet.

 

“I was there when she made it. I will take you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read this and any chapters that follow, great thanks, consider leaving a comment, it’d definitely influence my decision to write more. If not, hey that’s cool. I said try more than anything. Readership for my fandom stuff doesn’t concern me as much anymore. I’m too self-aware and vain to say it was only for myself because it wasn’t. 
> 
> Now it is.
> 
> We hope you enjoy.


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